Hands
by redtoes
Summary: Felicity knows her place in Oliver's life. She's the sidekick, not the love interest. But things can change when an old enemy comes calling. Set post-season 1
1. Cleaning Wounds

Green Arrow is owned by DC. Arrow the TV series is owned by CW. I own nothing.

It starts small. It starts with bribery in the form of bottles of wine, with bad cover stories about scavenger hunts and Oliver's own particular form of charm which has more in common with brute force than it does soft flirtation. He knows he's a handsome man, he can see she's flustered at his presence, and he uses that to get what he needs from her

But she's not an idiot, and when she finds him bleeding in the back seat of her car, her surprise is all about his injury, not his identity. She works with John Diggle to stitch him up, makes a choice to join the team, tries to act as his conscience when all he can see are the names in his book. They work together to find Walter, but her life isn't so goal oriented that she can't appreciate the view when he climbs up the salmon ladder shirtless.

He spends a lot of time shirtless.

At first she thought he was teasing her, but then she realised that what his motivation was for eschewing upper body wear, her feelings weren't under consideration.

Felicity is an analytical person. She works from data, from facts. Her mind strings disparate facts together until the bigger picture starts to make sense. From the start he used the fact she thought he was attractive against her. Now he rarely wears a shirt. It's hard not to see a correlation.

But there isn't one, not really. She doesn't have the role of love interest here. He has other women in his life for that. She's his sidekick - combination IT support and Jiminy Cricket, and his eyes never linger.

Sometimes she feels vindicated by this; she's a third generation feminist, who has always balanced girly clothes and bright lipstick with a determination not to be taken any less seriously at her work just because she has boobs. Other times she resents the fact that Oliver Queen, Billionaire playboy with a dating history in the gossip pages thicker than a phone book, just doesn't see her as desirable.

It's not like she wants to get involved with him, but it would be nice if he noticed her once in a while. For equality's sake.

She knows she doesn't want him. The occasional night-time fantasy - have you seen what he looks like? - doesn't count. It's just the normal everyday reaction to working alongside a super hero. She's even had the odd fleeting thought about John, and he's even more off the market.

She knows enough about this world and her part in it to know that she's here to support these two. Help them on their way to happiness with other people. She does that when she pushes John to ask out Carly, when she teases Oliver about McKenna. It's fun to look but she's not a groupie and she's not desperate. She just spends most evenings in the company of two of the fittest and most attractive men she's ever met, and she's not blind. She may be blonde but she's not dumb. Of course she's going to enjoy the view.

She hears herself saying things that make her cringe, but she's not about to stop talking around him. It's about the only thing she does that flusters him (in his own very stoic way) as much as he flusters her.

It's her own subtle form of revenge, and despite all the embarrassment she feels when she reveals a little too much, she delights in it.

And then Malcolm Merlyn triggers his artificial earthquake and destroys half of the Glades.

Felicity is in the club basement, tear tracks on her cheeks as she watches dust fall from cracks in the ceiling and wonders if this is it. Will the ceiling come down and crush her in her chair? How many are dead? The radio crackles in her ear and she can hear Oliver begging Tommy to open his eyes, to say something, anything.

Even over the crackle of the transmission she can hear the pain in his voice, the desperation and loss in his tone. He doesn't need to tell her Tommy's gone. She already knows.

She sits at her post and watches data fly across the screen. Notifications of emergency calls, dispatch notices of ambulances and fire engines, news reports from roving reporters. The city is bleeding right now because they failed it. She and Oliver and John tried and failed and innocent people died. All these months of work were for nothing. There was a second device and none of them saw it coming.

She wonders if Detective Lance is still alive. She feared for him when he triggered the short countdown on the device they were disarming. She heard half of a phone conversation telling his daughter - Oliver's Laurel - to get out of the Glades, but there hadn't been enough time for her even to get out of the building.

There's always a price.

This time Tommy paid it. Tommy and who knows how many others.

She's still watching the data when Oliver arrives. She doesn't know how long she's been sitting there, but her cheeks are long since dry. Her eyes are cried out, tears for the dying, tears for the dead and tears for the fact that all of it is down to their failure.

She looks up and Oliver is there, standing just beyond the screens. His hood is down and the green make-up he uses to hide his eyes is smeared and streaked just like what remains of her own mascara. She looks at him and sees heartbreak, and without a word she gets up from the computers, crosses to where he is and wraps her arms around his chest.

It isn't a moment of chemistry, longing or flirtation. His best friend died in his arms tonight and this is all the comfort she has to give him - to give anyone - right now.

Slowly she feels his head come down on her shoulder, his arms come up around her waist and he sags into her. She kicked off her shoes hours ago, so he should be standing taller than ever above her, but he's broken in ways he never was coming back from the island, and he feels small in her arms. Small and lost and broken.

"Get the medical kit," he says in a rough voice.

She blinks and steps back to look at him. She spots the injury immediately, a dark red stain on his upper chest.

"What?"

"Arrow," he says. "Malcolm was behind me. I had to take him out."

"So you stabbed yourself through the chest?" She hears her own voice rise several octaves.

"It was the only way," he says, not looking at her. His shoulders are slumped, his chest is bleeding. There's no animation in his voice. Everything about him is exhausted. And exhausting. She feels weary just looking at him, or maybe that's her own trauma externalising itself. No one could say it's been an easy day.

She raises her hands to the wound. There's not as much blood as she might expect given that he was impaled earlier this evening. She tries to remember her anatomy, what might have been hit.

"How's your breathing?"

"I missed the lung," he says. "All I hit was muscle."

"How do you know?"

"It hurts when I move."

She glares at him. "You're not a doctor, you don't know that."

"I know it."

"You went to medical school on that island of yours?"

"No," he says, his eyes going distant as they always do when he thinks of his past, "but I know I missed the lung. I've done too much running since I took the hit. If I'd punctured the lung I'd have known it."

She wants to fuss, try and make him go to the hospital, but she already knows his answer. Instead she pushes him towards a chair. He doesn't need fussing, he needs help.

"I'll get the kit," she says, "you, sit."

The medical kit should really be called the medical case - it's far bigger than any first aid collection she's ever seen outside of an emergency room. John keeps it stocked with everything from adrenalin shots to zinc oxide tape, all neatly labelled and categorised. He took her through it when Oliver was recovering from his mother's bullets and she worked hard to memorise the lessons. For a deep puncture arrow wound (John had gone into great depth about arrow wounds as they both agreed it was definitely something that would come up) that seems to have missed all major organs, she'll need these wipes, and that disinfectant and these bandages too.

She lines up supplies on the counter top and looks for gauze and tape.

Oliver has already taken off his Hood jacket by the time she turns back to him. He sits on the high stool, bruises already blossoming on his skin. The red of the blood has darkened and his wound looks like a dirty smear rather than an injury.

She doesn't often see the scars. Her eyes prefer to linger over the curve of his muscles or the line of his back, occasionally they notice the tattoos, which have never made a great deal of sense to her if he was, as he said publicly, stuck alone on an island for five years. But that's just another unknowable element of the enigma that is Oliver Queen.

Tonight however she sees the scars. The old and the new. This wound will close soon enough and become yet another mark on his body. She has an antiseptic wipe in her hand, ready to clean away the dried blood and dirt that cake the puncture, but she can't quite bring herself to do it.

Her hand hovers mere millimetres from his skin, but she doesn't close the distance.

"Felicity."

She jumps at the sound of her name on his lips. He sounds bone tired.

"Sorry," she says, pushing her glasses up her nose and bringing the wipe down to clean his injury. "Got distracted."

"Not what you had in mind?" He says, giving her a weak smile.

"Computer's don't bleed," she retorts, "and if they did it would be some kind of cooling fluid, not this."

The still damp blood is easy to remove, as is the grime of his sweat, the dirt on the skin. The dried ichor is harder, she has to push at it, scrape at it with her fingernails to give the wipe traction. It's icky and she thinks briefly of herself six months ago, the girl who could barely deal with her own cuts and bruises. She's come a long way since then. Ickiness is now an accepted part of her life.

"Ickiness?" He asks, and she flushes as she realises she must have been thinking out loud.

"You know what I mean."

He doesn't say anything else so she focuses on getting doing her job, cleaning him up. A second more of scraping lifts the last of the coagulated blood and caked dirt from his skin and a fresh trickle of red appears. She steps around his to repeat the action on the wound on his back.

"Who's arrow was it," she asks, "his or yours?" Oliver shifts in his seat but doesn't answer. "I don't suppose it matters," she continues. "One arrow is pretty much like another."

"Not really," he grunts.

"Of course there are differences," she admits, not really paying attention, just letting her mouth run as she works. "Otherwise you wouldn't have so many different types, but in terms of stabbing, does it matter what type of arrow it was? You still got stabbed. Even if you did stab yourself."

The entry and exit wounds are clean. She pulls off the gloves she's wearing over the dirty wipes in her hand, then pulls on another pair and grabs the antiseptic, ready to clean the inside of the wound as best she can.

"Are you still on antibiotics?" She asks, "maybe we should keep you on them all the time. But then, would that mean your system gets used to them and then you'll get one of those super-bugs?" She pauses, pulling up data from her memories, trying to remember how much over exposure to antibiotics it takes before infections get resistant. She remembers reading an article about it a long time ago when she needed to respond to a forum post about infectious disease on a zombie apocalypse board she used to visit in college. Was it the antibiotics themselves that caused the problem or the rise in antibiotic hand soaps? She doesn't recall. Either way the human race was screwed in the long term.

Her mind is ticking along while her hands work, cleaning his wound. The actual puncture is quite small, he might not need stitches, which is good because there's only so dispassionately professional she can be and pushing a needle through flesh crosses that line.

"I don't need stitches," he says, either reading her mind or trying to head off her argument that he should do to a hospital. In other circumstances she might disagree but it's already three in the morning and today has been long enough.

"Okay," she agrees, and attaches a pad of gauze to his chest with tape.

"You're not going to fight with me?" He says, sounding genuinely surprised, the first real emotion other than exhaustion he's shown since he arrived. "Tell me I need to go to the hospital."

"Would you go to the hospital?"

"No."

"Then what's the point? I'm too tired." She steps around the stool to place a second piece of gauze on his back. "Not that I think I'll get any sleep tonight. But I don't have the energy to argue with you about stitches. The bleeding's mostly stopped and it's not like one more scar will make a difference."

She unrolls a roll of cloth bandage and starts to wrap his chest. He doesn't really need the bandage but it'll help keep the gauze secure. She uses one hand to hold the end of it in place, then steps in to wrap it around his back and pass the cloth from one hand to the other. She's standing very close to him, her arms close to being wrapped around him, but she barely notices, so intent is she on her task.

"Where's the witty comment?" Oliver asks, and she frowns at him.

"What do you mean?" She shifts the angle of the bandage now so she's wrapping his shoulder, then going diagonally down his back to tuck the material under his arm. It won't cover the entire gauze pad but it should make it more secure.

"You're standing so close," he says, sounding more like himself than he has since he arrived back. "You've got your arms around me - where's the oh so witty comment? Something like 'I expected this to be more fun,' or I don't know, something flirtatious about tying me down? Or up?"

Felicity blinks at him.

"What?" She says, "I don't say -"

"You do," he interrupts. "Don't pretend you don't. You've always got something to say."

"Not tonight."

"No," his expression darkens, "not tonight."

"We failed," she says, not meeting his eye and focusing instead on securing the bandage in place with a safety pin. "We failed the city and people died."

"I failed the city."

"We failed the city," she says, "I should have known about the second device. If we'd known -"

"We'd have done, what?" He says, bitterly, "there's only three of us. It took both Diggle and I to take down Malcolm. We both almost died doing it. He's the one who failed the city. Malcolm."

"If I had gone with Detective Lance," she says as she tidies away the medical supplies, "if there had been two of us, maybe we could have found both devices, deactivated them both. Saved the Glades." She keeps her eyes on the bottles, on the packets, putting each one back into its proper drawer and collecting the dirty wipes and used gloves to throw away. If she keeps her mind on the task maybe she won't have to look up and see the death of his best friend in his face. The death she might have been able to prevent.

"No," he says, "you could have died."

"I could have saved," Tommy, "everyone."

"You could have died," he repeats. He turns in the seat, making her jump. Her elbow knocks a pair of scissors to the floor and she drops to a crouch to pick them up.

She places her hand on top of the scissors meaning to pick them up but something stops her. All at once the events of the evening hit her and she lacks the energy to even curl her fingers around the implement on the floor.

"Oliver," she says, "I'm so sorry about Tommy. I'm so sorry that I didn't know about the second device. That I didn't stop it."

"You didn't know," he says, "we didn't know."

She doesn't move, and suddenly he's there beside her, his large hand coming down on top of her hand on top of the scissors. His fingers thread through hers and he lifts her hand up from the ground, wrapped inside his.

Now he's standing close to her, his large frame behind her, her hand in his. She's not looking at him, and she knows that if it wasn't for the fact she's already shed every tear she could tonight she'd be crying right now.

He doesn't move their joined hands but his other arm comes up around her, pulling her back against him and holding her tight.

It's about the most awkward hug she's ever experienced, and she's counting her earlier attempt to comfort him in that. He's comforted her before but this so far from their normal relationship that she doesn't know what to say.

However ineffectual, she appreciates the gesture, so her raises her free hand and squeezes the arm he wrapped around her. She tightens her grip on his hand too, and he seems to get the message because he lets her go.

She turns to face him and isn't surprised to see tears in his eyes again.

"What now?" She asks, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing for her tablet, just so she had something to do with her hands.

"We go home, go to sleep, get up tomorrow."

"What now," she says, "for you? For the Hood?"

"Malcolm's dead, " he says, "Tommy's dead. The undertaking is over. The city doesn't need the Hood anymore, it needs money. Investment for rebuilding."

"It needs Oliver Queen," she says, realising.

"Maybe I can help save the city without a bow and arrow." He says, but there's none of the confidence there usually is in his voice when he's talked about the saving the city before. Instead there's uncertainty.

"Oliver Queen," she says, "man of the people."

"Something like that."

"What about all this?" She asks, "You promised John you'd find his brother's killer."

"We've still got to find Deadshot," he admits, "I'll give Diggle the closure he needs. But right now the city's what matters. The city and the people in it."

"Your mother's in jail," she realises. "With Malcolm dead she'll take more of the fall."

"Yeah," he sighs, "Thea called, she's safe. Laurel's with her father."

"He made it out okay," she sighs, "Thank God. I was worried."

"He's okay," Oliver confirms, "they both are, but Tommy,.." He looks past her and she realises he must be reliving his friend's death. "He said he loved Laurel, he saved her when I couldn't. He was the hero. And he died for it. Other people always seem to end up paying for my mistakes."

"You can't think like that," she says, "you did everything you could."

"Yes and it wasn't enough."

The pain in his voice is suddenly too much and before she knows it, she's stepped forward and has taken up his hand in both of hers.

"It was more than anyone else could do," she says softly, "you can't save everyone."

"I never could," he says, "My father's dead, my mother's in jail, Tommy's dead, Yao Fai's dead, Shado…"

"Who?"

"No one." Oliver's expression shuts down and he steps back, pulling his hand away from her, but she doesn't let go.

"No," she says, "You're alive, I'm alive, John's alive, Laurel, your sister - we're all alive because of you. If both devices had gone off this place would be dust, it's still standing because of you."

"Because of us."

"Fine, us. But mostly you. If you hadn't come back from that island none of us would have had a chance. Now we do, and whether you want to believe me or not, I know it's true. And whether you're Oliver Queen, masked vigilante or Oliver Queen, local businessman, I know you'll find a way to make things better. You're a hero."

She finishes her sentence and takes a breath. She stares up at him and he stares back down at her, and she realises suddenly that they're having a moment. That was a lot of words and she's sure she meant every one but she's standing here, looking up at the most handsome man she's ever met, holding onto him with both hands and telling him how wonderful he is. She's pretty sure there should be rising music for a moment like that, and they shouldn't both have red eyes and bone deep weariness and she shouldn't have a blood stain from his injury on her shirt.

His face softens and his free hand comes up, moving towards her face and she knows he's going to cup her cheek and lean in and while she's imagined a moment like this before she knows that this one is wrong wrong wrong so she pulls back.

"Go home," she says, dropping her hands from his. "Sleep in your own bed, wake up tomorrow. It's another day."

He's staring at her like he's never quite seen her before and she's uncomfortable.

"I won't be able to sleep," he says, and his voice sounds different than she's ever heard it before. She pretends to not notice.

"You should be with Laurel," she says, "go find her. Make sure she's okay."

"Felicity," he says, his voice deep and full of emotion.

"You need to go Oliver," she says, "find Laurel, find your sister. Be the better man you want to be."

"Where will you go?"

"Home," she says with a smile. "I'm going to go home, and then tomorrow I'm going to check on John, and then I'm going to come here, because if you're going to save the city properly, you're going to need help."

"Yeah," he says, but he accepts the jacket she throws him.

"She's in Starling City General," Felicity says, "nothing serious but they're keeping her for observation. Get changed. Go."

Oliver nods, but he's still watching her with that strange expression on his face.

"I'll see you in the morning?" he asks softly.

"Yes," she agrees, "I'll see you in the morning."

She's too tired to do anything else but go so she picks up her shoes and bag. Shoes she needs for the broken glass that's bound to be covering the sidewalk outside, bag for her car keys. She doesn't say anything else as she turns and walks away from him, trying not to think about the fact she might have just turned her back on her one chance to steal a kiss from Oliver Queen.

But even if that was her one chance, she doesn't regret it. Oliver's in pieces - he's strong but he's in shock. And right now she'd rather stand and fight alongside him tomorrow and all the days after, than risk it all tonight to play out a romantic moment more suited to a soap opera than her life. He'll need her support in the days to come, and he won't have that if he's avoiding her out of embarrassment.

She's not the heroine in this tale, even if he is the hero. She's the comic relief, the plucky sidekick, and for all that she'll check out his abs when he takes his shirt off, that's as far as it goes. She can look and she might comment but she can't touch.

This isn't insecurity speaking, she knows her place in his life.

She will feed him data, patch his wounds, and be his friend.

And that's it.

She's almost out the door when she hears:

"Good night, Felicity. And thank you."

"Good night, Oliver," she says, smiling at him from the door. "See you tomorrow."

And they're back to normal. No long looks, no strange tones.

She closes the door behind her, and finds her car miraculously untouched despite the crumbled walls and cracked asphalt around it. Everything's as normal as it can be in the aftermath of a man-made earthquake set off by a madman.

But if the skin of her hands tingle all the way home at the memory of his touch, she's not telling anyone.


	2. Burying bodies

Tommy's funeral takes place on a Wednesday.

Oliver stands away from the main group, behind them, near a tree.

He's lost in a sea of condolences and commiserations. His best friend is dead and his mother is (still) in jail and his best friend's father is the man behind it all and yet this fact is conveniently lost in a world of publicity and blame. Moira Queen gave the warning in her press conference, standing up to claim her guilt when she warned the populace. Malcolm Merlyn is officially only listed as missing but by virtue of his invisibility he seems to be treated as mostly innocent.

Maybe you're only guilty if you're around to be blamed after the fact. God knows Oliver is aware of Malcolm's guilt, but somehow the truth of it seems to have bypassed the general population.

Laurel is in the front row, seated in one of those white folding chairs you only ever see at funerals. She organised the whole thing, taking charge in Malcolm's absence to talk to the priest, the florist, the caterers. He was present for a lot of the meetings but he doesn't think he can remember anything at all apart from the fact that Laurel held his hand so tight that the tips of his fingers went white.

Her father is with her, Quentin Lance standing in for the family Tommy never had. Oliver wonders if his funeral was like this or if this is more like Sarah's. For a while there - before he went and screwed it up by running away on his father's boat with Sarah - the Lance sisters, Tommy and Oliver had been inseparable - all part of the same social crowd. He bets a lot of the people sitting in those chairs today were also here for his supposed death not so long ago. Strange that he can't remember their names.

Instead he nods at people. They come up to shake his hand, murmuring words about tragedy and loss. Oliver nods, thanks them for coming and moves on the next one. He's been playing more of a role today than he ever did as the Hood. At least that mask had a purpose, this bland expression he's pulled down over a grief so sharp it burns seems to exist only to provide comfort to people he neither knows nor cares about. The only person he wants to comfort right now has her father standing sentry by her side, and if the two weeks since she got out of the hospital have taught him anything it's that he and Laurel don't seem to know how to deal with Tommy's death aside from the practical parts of funeral planning.

When he found his spot beside this tree, he accidentally met her eye, saw the expression of annoyed betrayal there. He should have walked across the grass to sit beside her, everyone's eye on him, but he just couldn't. He can fight madmen and soldiers, shoot an arrow through a tennis ball at a hundred paces, kill his best friend's father, but he can't walk up to Tommy's grave.

He clenches his fists, watching the knuckles turn white and decidedly not looking at Laurel.

Then, suddenly, she's there.

Not Laurel, Felicity.

She slips into the space beside him, her right hand dropping down on top of his.

He stares at her, but she's not looking at him, her face is turned towards the ceremony, watching as a priest who never knew Tommy, and keeps calling him Thomas, drones on about sacrifice and the value of giving your life for others.

Felicity squeezes his hand without looking at him and he feels his fingers relax, almost involuntarily. The nails withdraw from the skin of his palms, leaving behind the small crescent shaped cuts. She turns his hand over and spots the damage.

"You're bleeding."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," she says, finally looking him in the eye, "it's blood."

She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and wraps it around his palm, holding the makeshift bandage in place by slipping her hand into his. "Is the other one bleeding too?" She asks softly, nodding to his right fist.

"Probably."

"Oliver," she tuts softly, "I only have the one handkerchief."

"It's fine," he says.

"It's not fine if you're bleeding. You're bleeding at a funeral. I'm sure that's against one of the rules."

"Rules?"

"Church rules," she says, waving her free hand vaguely, "religious rules. Rules of religion. Or something."

"Felicity," he warns.

"Fine," she subsides, "but when this is over you're coming with me to get band aids."

He nods, and she turns her attention back to the priest, who's now talking about what Tommy gave back to the community as if he was some kind of soup-handing-out charitable trust and not the hard drinking partier than Oliver could always rely on to be the last one standing with a bottle in his hand. But then there was more to Tommy than that, he kept Oliver's secret and he saved Laurel's life. And he stepped aside so they could be together. Five years can change anyone, Oliver knows that better than most, and Tommy changed. Tommy fell in love and got a job and turned his back on his father. Oliver wonders how much of that was Laurel and how much was Tommy growing up. He supposes that now he'll never know. The time to have those conversations never quite happened and Tommy's not around anymore to answer anyway.

Tommy's dead.

Oliver shifts his stance, putting one hand out to rest against the tree bark and suddenly realises Felicity is still holding his other hand.

He glances sideways at her, she's in a black dress and boots, her hair pulled back in a severe braid, as if by tying it down tightly it will become a more somber shade. Not that it ever could, Felicity's hair is like sunshine, shimmering waves of gold that he so rarely has seen down around her shoulders. He remembers her saying that she dyes it, wonders what her natural color is.

Her hand is small in his, the callouses from the bow rub against soft skin. She seems delicate sitting beside him, all long legs and awkwardness - like a baby deer taking it's first steps. He wants to protect her but she's already been threatened by Helena, left tied up on the floor of her office, and he doesn't want to remember how scared she looked with a bomb around her neck. All because of him, because he pulled her into this dangerous world of his.

Just like Tommy.

"Shh," Felicity whispers, "you're thinking too loud."

He looks up from their joined hands to see her smile at him. "None of this is your fault Oliver," she says, leaning in so she can talk with the barest of volumes. "We agreed that, remember?"

He nods, not trusting his voice not to betray the anguish and guilt she seems determined he should not be feeling. He follows her example, turning his head to face the follow the ceremony, like he should.

But he doesn't let go of her hand.

When the priest stops talking and mourners get up to throw dirt into the hole in the ground where Tommy is, she looks at him. She obviously expects him cross the cemetery and join in but he has no intention of getting any closer than he already is.

"Okay," she breathes softly and then pulls him back around the tree, out of the sight of the funeral party. He lets her pull him, lets her hand take him with her as she rummages in her over-sized handbag.

"Felicity," he starts, but she holds up one finger in a gesture for silence.

"I know they're in here somewhere - ah!" She grins, pulling a travel-sized first aid kit from beneath tablet, make-up bag and car keys.

He blinks. "You brought medical supplies to a funeral?"

"Yeah well," she says, opening the small case and pulling out a tube of antiseptic cream and several band aids, "my boss has this tendency to get hurt, seemed like a good idea."

He lets her doctor him, dotting cream on the tiny, already half closed marks. He can see the scar tissue in his palms, knows that these are just the latest in a long line of times he's cut into his own skin with his nails, trying to clamp down on screams or keep his calm. He knows that, but she doesn't, so he lets her tend to the injuries.

"There we are," she says, pressing down on the last band aid to keep it in place. "Good as new!"

"Thank you," he says, flexing his fingers and watching the plastic bandages shift in place. He tries not to think of all the times on the island when his hands bled and there was no friendly blonde to dress the injury. Though that does lead to a mental image of Slade wearing a long blond wig which brings him some amusement.

"That's better," she says, "a smile, I mean. It's nice to see you smiling."

"Not really the time for it," he replies, looking up from his hands to her face.

She pats him on the shoulder, somewhat awkwardly. "Tommy wouldn't want you to grieve forever," she says.

No, Tommy wanted him to get out of Laurel's life or go be with her or stop running around the city at night firing arrows at people. Tommy wanted a lot of things that seemed to change on a weekly basis. Tommy wouldn't want to be dead.

She must see some of his thoughts on his face - and dammit he thought all the years of training alongside Slade and Shado had taught him to guard his expressions better than this - because she's stepping in again, placing her hand on his arm. "Do you need me to get Laurel?" She asks, softly serious.

"No," he tries for a calm tone but even to him his voice sounds like a choking sound. "No Laurel."

He looks up to sees the mourners walking away from Tommy's grave.

Tommy's grave.

"Do you want to go over there?" She asks, "Say goodbye?"

"I already said goodbye," he says, remembering the last few moments of Tommy's life and his complete inability to do anything to save him. All his training and skills and experience, and there was nothing he could do.

"Okay," she says, and just stands there, her hand on his arm. It doesn't feel quite right, so he places his hand over hers, lifting it off, entwining their fingers, so they are once again holding hands.

Felicity looks at him strangely but doesn't say anything, just lets him keep hold of her hand.

As Laurel walks away from Tommy's grave she looks at him strangely. She's safe in the embrace of her father, so he doesn't go to her. In fact, he realises as he stands here holding Felicity's hand thirty feet from his best friend's grave, he doesn't want to go to her. It hasn't been that long since he returned to her willingly, before Malcolm set off the earthquake device and killed his own son and dozens of innocents. A matter of days, weeks. It feels like years.

Laurel was his compass on the island, his guiding light, that one small photograph getting him through torturous days and worse nights. Laurel kept him sane, gave him purpose.

But was it Laurel, or, the idea of Laurel?

Slade had said as much once, when Oliver had told him about the girl waiting at home.

"The girl whose sister you slept with. Whose sister died because she ran away on a boat with ya? Yeah, that's a happy ending I'd like to see. 'Hi honey, I'm home.' 'You killed my sister.' SLAP!" And then he laughed because Slade was a hard man who had no time for feelings or anything that didn't either have a blade or a trigger mechanism on it. The bastard.

He'd stared at that photo for hours all the same. Laurel and home. Home and Laurel. Somewhere along the line the two had become so meshed together he could barely separate one from the other.

It was only on the fishing boat, when he was presented with the first scissors he'd seen in years, when he started to hack offhis long dirty hair in the just as dirty bathroom, when he realised he was actually going home, and that how he had actually left things with Laurel five years previously didn't necessarily mean she'd be happy to see him return.

When he thought he could hang up his hood, stop the undertaking and leave everything dangerous behind him, he'd gone to her. But not before and not after. He couldn't be in anyone's live while he was the Hood; while there were names to cross off the list it had to take priority. Love was for peacetime, not wartime.

But he'd let some people in.

Diggle.

Felicity.

Even Tommy.

But not Laurel.

No, he'd kept her far away from the violence and the darkness, not wanting her to link the masked vigilante with the man she used to love. He had to talk to her as the Hood and she'd never seen past the voice modulator and green eye make up. Even he had to admit he was a little surprised by that - it's not like he was wearing a mask, not really.

And when he was hurt. When he was shot and thought he was dying, he didn't go to her then. Instead he went to Felicity, brought her into the secret, put her at risk.

He glances at the girl - the woman - standing beside him. Tall and slim and oh so delicate. He had no difficulty manhandling her through an elevator shaft or pinning her on the training mat. And when her radio was destroyed at that underground casino he'd nearly lost it, breaking down walls and doors like a man possessed.

She's standing here with him, holding his hand. Being his friend, waiting for him.

Laurel's already halfway across the cemetery, wrapped in her own grief and her father's protection. Laurel lost the man (one of the men) she loved. Oliver lost his brother in everything but blood.

Felicity is holding his hand.

Oliver lets out a breath it feels like he's been holding for years. He looks back, through the trees to Tommy's grave. Uniformed workers are now filling the hole, dumping shovel loads of dirt back into the ground, closing the wound of the grave.

The past is the past is the past.

All the remains is the future.

The city still needs to be saved.

"Come on," he says to Felicity, "let's go to the club."

"You want to work?" She says, confused.

"No," he replies, "I want to drink, and that's where the alcohol is."

He leads her out of the cemetery, back to their cars, and he only lets go of her hand when he absolutely has to.


	3. Breaking bottles

In hindsight Felicity thinks, the tequila was probably where she went wrong.

She isn't entirely sure what she's doing here. It's been six hours since Oliver took her hand and walked them both away from Tommy's funeral and she's spent most of that time sitting here on the bar - not at the bar but on the bar - watching Oliver mix drinks like he'd spent five years on intensive cocktail course and not shipwrecked on an island. Of course, she muses internally, its certainly possible that Oliver's island had included a cocktail bar - he never talks about it, so mixing cocktails seems about as likely as shooting arrows. And, as her current level of drunkeness can certainly attest, he's certainly skilled at both.

Wow she's wasted.

She's not entirely sure how that happened. She had planned to be there for him. Make sure he was doing okay. Provide whatever comfort and support she could. As his friend.

Instead she's really very drunk and he seems barely buzzed. It's not like they're matching each other drink for drink but still, why is she so drunk?

"Why am I so drunk?"

Oh, she said that out loud.

"I think it's something to do with all the drinking." Felicity lifts her head up long enough to see the amusement on his face. She was sitting crosslegged on the bar, but her head felt too heavy so she had lay down. On the bar.

"This is your fault." She says, pointing an accusing finger at him. "I am supposed to be here, helping you. Instead I'm drunk. You got me drunk."

Oliver holds out a glass of water in front of her and she immediately sits up, grabbing for it eagerly.

"You're welcome," he says. He's not quite grinning but it's close. You'd never think he buried his best friend this morning.

She blinks at him, trying to make sense of him.

But he never makes sense.

"Did you learn how to make drinks on your island?"

"No," he says, his brow furrowing with confusion, "that's a pre-island skill."

"You were a bartender before you were a superhero?"

"No," he says again, "I was a rich college kid who went to a lot of parties."

"Huh," she says. He's looking a little out of focus so she pushes her glasses back up her nose. Her mother always used to try and get her to wear contacts every day but she likes her glasses, like all the different color frames and shapes. She likes having something between her eyes and real world. It means she gets to choose what she wants to see clearly. "I wonder if we would have been friends."

Oliver looks away. She takes this to mean she's touched a nerve.

"I mean," she says, trying to bring back the half smile he was wearing earlier, "I used to see you in the papers all the time. And on the internet. Did you know there were whole fan sites dedicated to you? People would send in cell phone pictures and other people would vote on whether you looked better with this haircut or that one? And that was before you got all arrow-y."

"Arrow-y?" Oliver says, refusing to acknowledge the more interesting part of the sentence, to her at least. He had fans. He was internet-famous. Probably still is. She's sure she could find some RPF fic about him and the celebrities he used to hang with back in the day. She'd pull it up now if it wasn't for the fact that she wants to make him smile not recoil. RPF can be traumatising enough when it's not written about someone you know IRL.

"Arrow-y, as in 'with arrows'. And hood. Why do you wear a hood and not a mask?"

"It's a long story."

"We've got time," she says, "and you owe me a story for getting me all drunk-y."

"Are you going to put a y on the end of all the nouns tonight?"

"Drunk's an adjective," she points out.

"I never said I went to class in college," he says, but he's starting to smile again so she doesn't mind.

"What did you do in college?"

"Drank mostly," he says, his eyes looking past her, soft at the memory. "Tommy was in a frat, he used to throw the best parties."

"Were you in a frat?"

"No, my Dad used to say something about never being a member of any club that would take him. I liked the idea."

"Groucho Marx," Felicity nods. "Or possible Harpo, I don't remember."

"It was Groucho," Oliver confirms. He leans back against the bar, putting his weight on his elbows and looking out across the dark emptiness of his club.

"What was he like?" She asks, pulling her legs up under her where she sits on the bar.

"Groucho Marx?"

"Your dad," she rolls her eyes at him and he grins again.

"You're really drunk," he says. "You're swaying."

"I'm sitting."

"You're still swaying. You're swaying in your seat."

Felicity looks down at herself. He's right, she is swaying.

"I'm very drunk.

"You are very drunk," he agrees.

"Why aren't you drunk?"

"Good genes," he shrugs. She narrows her eyes at him.

"I bet you were fun in college," she says.

"Oh I was a lightweight in college," he admits, "two shots of tequila and I was anyone's. Tommy had to teach me to drink."

"How did he do that?"

"Mostly," Oliver reminisces, "he got me drunk. Fed me shots until I liked them."

"Sounds like a good friend."

"He was," Oliver sighs, "of course he was also the sort of friend to spike your drink, shave your eyebrows and draw on your face with magic marker."

"Are there pictures?" Felicity asks, more than a little eagerly. Photos of a drunken eyebrow-less Oliver covered in magic marker would have been worth a lot on the kind of sites she definitely doesn't visit anymore.

"Long ago destroyed," Oliver says, "Along with all the evidence of the cross-dressing pub crawl we went on with a rugby team in London junior year."

"You can find anything on the internet," she says, "the internet knows all and sees all and nothing is ever deleted." She gestures with her hands. "And I am the queen of the internet." She grins and throws her arms wide, losing her balance as she goes.

As ever, Oliver is immediately there, one hand in hers, his other arm wrapped around her back steadying her.

"Queen Felicity, eh?" He says, his mouth very close to her ear.

"Better that than Felicity Queen," she says before her mind catches up with her mouth. He freezes beside her, not moving. She can tell her cheeks have gone bright pink. She hates it when she does this. "Oh, er, I didn't mean -"

"Felicity Queen," he says, his voice a low rumble. She can't see his face but she can imagine the expression, the slightly shocked, very stoic I'm-going-to-pretend-you-didn't-say-that expression he wears oh so often in her presence.

"Oliver," she says, realising that he's still holding her hand and has an arm around her waist. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."

"So you haven't," he says, "been doodling our names together in your diary?"

"Never," she replies, trying for the same light tone he has in his voice, "all my crushes are written on my pencil case in corrector fluid and luminous ink."

"Felicity hearts Oliver?"

"Felicity 4 Oliver - that's the number 4, not the word. In a heart. That's how all the kids are doing it these days."

"Kids these days," he says, sounding amused. "You're really very drunk aren't you?"

"Very drunk," she says, waiting for the punchline, waiting for him to let go of her, to walk away.

He doesn't.

"Come on," he says instead. His arm slips off her waist and he drops her hand and she's suddenly bereft at the loss of his touch, but before she has time to mourn he's picking her up in a bridal carry.

"Oliver!"

"You're too drunk to drive home, there's way no a cab will come out to the Glades right now, and there's a cot in the basement."

"What are you doing?" She squeals, "Put me down!"

"Felicity," he says simply, and without any sort of exertion in his voice. "You need to sleep it off."

"Oliver!"

"Felicity," he repeats, and suddenly she realises that his right hand is resting on her bare thigh, just above the hem of her dress, and she has to bite down on the urge to let out a little moan. She goes for silence instead, which he seems to take as acceptance of his sleep-on-the-cot plan. "I'm not going anywhere," he says, "you'll be safe, just sleep."

He carries her down the stairs as if she's weightless. He's strong enough to hold her up seemingly indefinitely. She's held tight against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. She can feel the heat of his skin through the thin material of the white shirt he's wearing.

His left arm is wrapped around her back and his right arm is under her legs.

His right hand is right there on her leg.

He pauses beside the door, shifting his hand to tap the code in and when he returns it to her leg it's even higher up on her thigh.

Felicity clamps down on the urge to shiver. She takes the instinct that would have her tip her head back and press her lips to his neck and squashes it tight into a small ball deep inside her. He's looking after her as a friend. Because she's drunk. This doesn't mean anything.

If it meant something he'd be running his hand up her leg.

She closes her eyes and tries hard not to imagine what that would feel like.

She's unsuccessful.

She's drunk and she's being carried by the most gorgeous man in her life and HIS HAND IS ON HER THIGH and she's about to just say fuck it and tilt her head up to kiss him, and suddenly he's laying her down on the hard frame of the cot, smoothing her skirt down and pulling down a blanket from somewhere to cover her.

And she stares up at him and she's about to say something, and he smiles and leans in and kisses her on the forehead.

In a very platonic way.

What fire there was burning inside her damps down instantly. She was obviously imagining it, there had been nothing there but her own drunken thoughts.

"Oliver," she starts, but he shushes her.

"Sleep, Felicity, we'll talk in the morning."

"Stay," she says, but he's already walking away.

"I won't be far," he says, "sleep."

And he must have some sort of magic in his voice because even as she wants to reach for him, she can feel the heavy pull of sleep on her.

The last thing she sees before she closes her eyes is his smile, and she thinks that even if she's misinterpreting things and imagining things at least she could be here for him today, make him smile today.

Because that's what friends do.


	4. Easing tension

Felicity hacks interpol in search of Floyd Lawton's current location. Watching over her shoulder Oliver appreciates the smooth speed of her typing, the confidence she has in her virtual world, so different to the flustered way she behaves in real life. She has to know she's pretty - she certainly dresses the part - but she never seems to act it. He's constantly surprised by her - he hoped he would find someone like Diggle to help him fight his battles but he never expected Felicity.

He never expected Felicity at all.

In the week since Tommy's funeral he's spent every day with her. It's all professional - he's got workmen in the club repairing the structural damage caused by Malcolm's earthquake machine and someone needs to be here to make sure they don't wander downstairs and discover the club's lower levels. He's had equipment to put away, damage to clean up. She's run system check after system check, breaking into secure databases all over the world in search of information to enable Diggle's revenge.

Not that Diggle's been here. With his injuries mostly healed he's been spending a lot of time at Carly's, cleaning up the restaurant ready for the grand post-earthquake reopening. He says he's in no rush to track down Deadshot but he still wants to know where he is. Both Diggle and Oliver know they need a better plan if they're going to take out one of the best snipers in the world. No one wants him to slip through their fingers again.

And they definitely don't want to end up as a name inked on his body.

They've already lost more than enough this year.

Felicity pauses in her typing. Lifts a hand to rub at the back of her neck.

She sighs, tipping her head from side to side, obviously trying to work out the kinks.

"Stiff?"

She glances up at him and smiles. "I'm told I carry a lot of tension in my neck. But then the guy who told me that was trying to get me to sign up for his massage course. Ten lessons for $300. Could have had an ulterior motive."

She stretches her hands up in the air and Oliver actually hears her back crack.

"That doesn't sound good."

"Perils of the job," she says, "stiff neck, aching wrists. Too much typing makes Felicity an ache-y girl."

His hands are moving before he even realises, landing on her shoulders and rubbing the muscles.

He half expects her to freeze; they don't really have this kind of relationship and in the past she's almost always been the one to initiate any kind of physical contact.

Instead she groans, low in her throat. Relaxing into his hold and dropping her head down to give him access to the back of her neck.

"Yes, please," she says. "That feels really good."

"You do carry a lot of tension in your neck," he says, because he's not quite sure what else to say, and now that he's started this he doesn't want to be the one to pull away. That's just rude. She's only aching because of the work she's doing for him, and they're friends after all. Friends give friends backrubs, don't they?

"A little lower," she says and he moves his hands to oblige. "You're really good at that," she adds. "Is this another one of your island skills?"

"Not really," he says rubbing at a particularly tight knot, "there wasn't much time for massage on the island."

"Five years," she says, almost absently. "Five years is a really long time."

"Yeah," he agrees. He looks down to see his hands moving over the pale skin of her neck. Her hair is up in it's usual pony tail but it's long enough that the end of it tickles across the back of his hands. It's much softer than he imagined it would be - it always looks like spun gold and the real texture is very different. He has a sudden urge to sweep all of her hair to one side and… what?

It's an uncomfortable moment, so he steps back, dropping his hands to his sides.

"Feeling better?" He asks to cover his abrupt withdrawal.

"Much," she says, returning her attention to the screen. "Feel free to do that any time you want. It was great."

"I can tell," he says, "you were very vocal."

"You should hear me in bed," she quips, then groans and buries her face in her hands. "Oh god, Oliver, I'm so sorry, why do I always have to say the wrong thing?"

"It's okay," he says, pushing away the mental image her words conjured up. It's a good thing he's no longer touching her because he doesn't think he could have hidden how his hands spasmed when she said it. Felicity in a bed. Felicity in his bed.

"It's not," she says, spinning in her chair to face him, "I just keep doing this. I don't mean it. We're friends and I, and you - I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he repeats, stepping back again. He needs some distance right now. "It doesn't mean anything."

Felicity flushes and looks away.

"No, of course not," she says. "I'd better get back to work."

"I'm going to check the inventory," he says, "if we're reopening this week I need to make sure there's enough stock."

"Right," she says, turning back to the computer. "Let me know if you need me to order anything in. Tommy gave me access to the club accounts ages ago."

"Sure," he says, already walking away from her, trying to focus his mind on what Verdant needs and not the vivid mental images his brain keeps trying to force upon him.

Once he's out of sight he stops. Leans against the wall and tries hard to think about cases of tequila and whether or not they're out of angostura bitters for the mix bar. Not what her blonde hair would look like against the dark blue of his sheets.

Felicity is a friend. A friend. A remarkably pretty friend with a tendency to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, but a friend all the same. He remembers how she looked when he put her to bed on the night of Tommy's funeral, the look of complete and utter trust she wore when she looked at him.

He doesn't want to do anything to wipe that look of her face. And treating her like some kind of floozy to help him get past the mess he's made of his relationship with Laurel would do that.

He risks a glance back around the corner, Felicity is hard at work, her attention fixed on the screen in front of her. From this angle he can see her raise a hand to the back of her neck, rub absently at the spot he was just touching.

"What's got your attention?"

Oliver jumps, turning to see Diggle standing nearby.

"I didn't hear you come in," Oliver says.

The older man raises an eyebrow.

"It's a rare day when I can sneak up on you."

"Yeah, well," Oliver says, "it won't happen again."

"We'll see," Diggle looks past Oliver to Felicity's desk. "How's she doing?"

"She's fine. No news on Larson though. She's trying to break into Interpol, see if they have a current location."

Diggle nods.

"How're you?" Oliver asks, looking pointedly at where Malcolm had managed to injure the bodyguard.

"Healing," Diggle says dismissively. "Carly's got me stacking boxes and sweeping floors, won't let me out of her sight."

"And yet you're here."

"Had to check in, make sure you're not working her too hard. She has a day job, you know."

"I know," Oliver says, "but I'm told the Queen Consolidated office isn't open yet. Something to do with my mother languishing in a jail cell and the former CEO refusing to return from London."

"I thought you might step in," Diggle says pointedly.

"Dig," Oliver replies, spreading his hands wide, "Nothing's changed, I don't know anything about running a business."

"You never know what you can do until you try," Diggle argues, "and I think it's safe to say you're pretty good at picking up new skills."

"Running a company isn't like shooting an arrow. It's not even like running a club. I'd be a disaster in the boardroom."

"I don't know," Diggle says, "I think you might surprise yourself. Sometimes we just don't know what we want or what we can do until it's right in front of us. Sometimes not even then."

Oliver scowls at him. The message is unsubtle and he's not in the mood to hear it.

"I've got inventory to check," he says, "for my real business."

"And here I thought your real business involved a bow and arrow," Diggle says, but he holds up his hands to show he doesn't want the fight.

Oliver holds his tongue, discretion is the better part of valor after all. He turns his back on his brother-in-arms, heading for the store room.

"Felicity!" He hears Diggle say, "I hear you're hacking for me."

"Anything for you, John," comes her response and Oliver clamps down on the irritation he feels and starts searching through crates.

As he suspected, the club is low on angostura bitters. He'll need to order more.


	5. Growing trials

_Look at that, it found plot... or at least a larger non-romantic plot..._ _I should say now that I know remarkably little about the US court system, so please forgive any large errors, or comment and tell me and I'll fix them._

Moira Queen's court date is moved up and Felicity finds herself sitting beside Oliver in the first row of the public seating.

His mother has the best lawyers money can buy, but even they couldn't get her bail for what's been described in the press as the largest domestic terrorist attack on American soil. Ever. Too many people died as a result of her warning for it to be viewed as the positive self-sacrificial gesture she intended it as. The panic and looting claimed just as many lives as the implosions and collapsing buildings caused by Malcolm's artificial earthquake, and there had been more than one commentator blaming her just as much as Merlyn.

And Merlyn's body was never found. John left it on the roof when he went to seek medical attention and when he returned there was no corpse to be found. Oliver said it had probably already been collected by the emergency services an listed as a John Doe but Felicity had her doubts. She's read too many books and seen too many movies to be sure the monster is dead just because it looks that way. She trusts Oliver and his judgement entirely, but this wouldn't be the first time an enemy they thought was dead has miraculously reappeared.

She risks a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He's impassive, wearing his stoicism like it's kevlar. It's rare for her to see him out in public as Oliver Queen, devoted son, rather than Oliver Queen, the Hood. Even the few interactions in which she's watched him play the role of Oliver Queen, nightclub owner, don't quite match the man sitting next to her right now.

His sister isn't here. Oliver hasn't mentioned why but Felicity follows enough news blogs to know that Thea Queen has publicly deplored her mother's involvement in the attack on the Glades. She was there that night, one blog said, she saw the damage done and was traumatised by it. Another reporter said that Thea Queen was no longer speaking to her mother. Oliver won't be drawn on it, but Felicity can read between enough lines to see what it means that he's practically moved in to the club. John said the Queen girl hasn't been home since the attack, choosing instead to stay with a boyfriend in the Glades, but that's another topic Oliver won't be drawn on.

Instead he sits here, waiting for his mother to come in and be publicly gutted legally.

She's sitting beside him and she's not entirely sure why she's here.

Though that's not entirely true. She's here for the same reason she went to Tommy's funeral. She wants to make sure he's okay. She wants to be his friend.

But there's a hell of a lot of difference between being his friend in the basement of his club and being his friend here in front of all of Starling City. And Starling City's press.

She chose very carefully how close she would sit. No part of her is pressed against any part of him. She remembers all too well the feel of his hands on her neck, his hand on her thigh, his hand in hers. She's sitting a respectable distance away, close enough that she is here to take his hand if he needs it, but not so close that she's leaning against him. There's a good six inches of space between them and she has no intention of crossing that distance.

Or rather, she had had no intention.

This trial is over subscribed. The room is filling up fast.

So far the front row has been mostly left alone. It's full but not cramped, the seats taken by a mixture of family (Oliver), friends (some older women Oliver had accepted cheek kisses from while declining to introduce her) and eager members of the press.

As the bailiffs announce the judge's arrival an extra person arrives.

Pushing past onlookers and wellwishers, a young man in a red hoodie arrives, slipping into the small amount of space between Oliver and the end of the pew - space she had assumed he had left for his absent sister.

The kid is brash, young, in his early twenties at most. He's not dressed for this level of polite society but is seemingly determined not to let it get to him. He slips into the pew, forcing his way into the space between Oliver and the aisle, pushing Oliver sideways into her. Her right leg is suddenly pressed up against a young female reporter on the court beat, with the arrival of the kid in red Oliver is now pressed up against her left one. Her hand is caught between her leg and his. She squirms slightly, meaning to pull herself free but then the kid speaks and she gets distracted.

"Hello Thea's disapproving elder brother," he says and Felicity senses rather than sees the hard glare Oliver turns on him.

"Ray."

"Roy."

"Whatever."

The kid bristles, hands forming into fists. Oliver stays ever calm, unbothered. On the surface at least. She knows him well enough to read the angry currents underneath.

"She was never going to be here." The kid - Roy - says. "She didn't want to come."

"She's her mother," Oliver growls. His hand on his knee curls up into a fist. She knows, just looking at it, that his fingernails will be cutting into the skin of his palms again, and before she even his time to think of it, she's wrenched her hand from where it was trapped between their legs, and has slipped it into his. Anything to prevent more of his blood being spilled.

Oliver glances at her but says nothing.

Roy - who apparently doesn't miss much - eyes her hand in his but doesn't address it.

"I said I'd come here for her," he says, "she's angry."

"We're all angry." Oliver says, "doesn't change the fact that she should be here for her mother. She tried to do the right thing."

"Trying doesn't count for much," Roy says.

"Trying is everything," Oliver retorts.

"All rise," the bailiff announces. Roy glowers at Oliver but keeps his mouth shut, Oliver stands, pulling Felicity with him. His hand is tight around hers. She glances down at their entwined hands. Oliver's not paying attention to her, instead he's leaning forward slightly, his eyes on his mother as she walks into the courtroom, dressed in a crumpled outfit. Is it the same one she wore to that fateful press conference? Felicity thinks it might be.

Oliver's hand tightens on hers and she looks at him. He's focused on his mother but he's not letting go of her.

Part of her - a very small part - wonders what this means. That she has become his port in a storm, his anchor in this way.

The rest of her thinks she's just a convenient comfort.

The Judge tells them all to be seated and he does so, pulling her with him. This time, despite the lack of space in the pew, he forces their hands down out of sight, keeping his hand and hers pressed between their thighs.

She thinks for half a second that maybe he wants to hide her away from the world. Then she realises Roy (and who knows how many journalists all around them) saw her take his hand, so it's hardly like they're being circumspect.

His mother is looking over her shoulder at him. She's an elegant, composed woman but even Felicity can see the pain in her eyes. The pain of a missing child. An absent child.

His fingers are curled around hers, maybe it makes her a bad person but she's barely able to pay attention to what's being said, instead his skin pressed against hers holds her whole attention.

Her other hand is on her knee, her fingers holding on to her kneecap to keep it still. She looks forward but she doesn't see anything.

Yet again Oliver Queen has made himself her whole world.

She'd like to think he doesn't do it on purpose.

He certainly seems to be completely unaware of the effect he has on her.

And this crush, whatever it is, she needs to get over it. She can't be the friend he needs if she's going to get lost in her own head every time he touches her.

The lawyers talk but it's like there's cotton wool in her ears. She can't make out the words. She's vaguely aware that these particular preceedings are not about guilt or innocence but rather something to do with what evidence will be included. Or maybe it's all about what evidence will be excluded. Episodes of Law and Order echo in her head. The courtroom is familiar and exotic at the same time. She doesn't quite know what she's doing here.

Except holding his hand.

She blinks and suddenly the trial is over. Oliver's mother is being escorted out of the room. The judge has already left.

Roy is leaving. He has time for one more dark look at Oliver and then he's off, moving through the crowd like a shark.

Oliver stands and Felicity stands with him. He walks quickly and she has no choice but to follow.

He's walking out of the courtroom, dodging reporters, and he doesn't seem to realise he's pulling her with him like a ship in his wake. He's not a small man, and he's never been to be afraid to use his island bought-bulk to get what he wants. Which in this case would seem to be escape.

"Oliver!" She says, but he doesn't hear her.

Instead he pushes through the crowd, pulling her with him.

She would have thought he didn't even know she was there, but then he pauses, holding open a car door for her.

She slips inside and he follows her.

"How was it?" Felicity looks up to see John behind the wheel.

"As well as it could be," Oliver says, settling himself on the seat beside her.

And he still hasn't let go of her hand. His other hand lays in his lap, opening and closing like he needs to reassure himself he can use his fingers.

Felicity stares, but Oliver says nothing, staring out of the window.

John looks up and meets her eyes in the mirror. There's something in his expression she can't read right now.

She looks down at Oliver's hand holding hers.

She's not an idiot. This needs to be addressed. She's not a favourite toy or comfort blanket he can pick up or put down as he chooses.

"Oliver?"

"Yes," he says, not looking away from the window.

"Oliver," she repeats, "did you know that you're holding my hand?"

His eyes dart to hers and then down at their joined hands. She sees the spark of something close to panic in his expression and she realises he had no idea he had hold of her. That he had hold of her all this time.

"Felicity - "

"It's okay," she interrupts. "I don't mind. It's fine. But," she leans in closer, "are you okay? Really? You seem a little out of it."

"I'm fine,"he says and lets go of her. Bereft he hand falls the few inches to the cushioned car seat, and just lays there. It's as if she's forgotten what to do with it when it's not touching him.

She's not looking at him, he's not looking at her. Instead she looks up at the mirror, in time to see John wince.

And Oliver's hand is gone. Our of her reach. Just like the rest of him.

She feels incredibly empty as a result.


	6. Avoiding temptation

He starts to avoid her. The office reopens and she's obliged to be there. She can't spend all day every day sitting beside him in a courtroom.

And he wouldn't ask her to. Even if the fact that she was there made the first day so much easier and had helped him clamp down on his urge to teach Thea's new boyfriend a few lessons in respect. He still can't quite believe that his little sister - his Speedy - has chosen her former mugger over her own mother, but almost dying in a man-made earthquake does bring out strange things in people.

He, for instance, can't seem to stop holding hands with Felicity.

And just what is up with that anyway? He's not six.

He sits behind his mother's legal team and listens to lawyers question witnesses. The law has never been a particular interest of his - that's one of things he used to rely on Laurel for - but he knows enough to know that this suit the government is pursuing against his mother is more about hot tempers than actual evidence.

When they're both in the club basement he makes sure he always has something in his hands - fighting sticks, his bow, a whetstone to hone the edge of his arrows and throwing knives. Sometimes a coffee cup is enough - though with that he runs the risk that she might ask him for a refill and handing her mug to her dances dangerously close to the line.

He doesn't know what it is that drives him to touch her. And she's never stopped him, but when they were sat in the back of the car on the first day of the trial and she asked if he was okay, all he could think that he'd just shown the entire world (and all its reporters) how much she means to him, and that way lies danger and vulnerability. He's already lost Laurel to Tommy's ghost, his former love silently choosing his former best friend when it was too late to do anything about it. They never even had the conversation, not really. He's seen her several times since the funeral but it's as if when Tommy's body descended into the ground, the last of the things they had to say to each other went with it.

And as selfish as it is he can't handle her grief right now; he's far too busy with his own.

Diggle keeps looking at him in a very knowing way but Oliver has always been very good at ignoring things he doesn't want to see - that's how he ended up with a list, a dead father and five years of trauma to work through, after all.

Instead he asks Diggle to teach Felicity more self-defence. She's not there when he does so, and Diggle takes the opportunity to press him.

"Seriously Oliver, this has to stop."

"What has to stop?"

"You're mooning after her like a love-sick child."

"What?" Oliver splutters, "Mooning? I don't moon. I have never mooned."

"What else would you call it?" Diggle asks, seeming unconcerned with the fact that Oliver has plenty of access to edged (and non-edged) weaponry and the skills to use it.

"As her employer," Oliver says, keeping his tone as calm as he can, "I'm responsible for her. We're responsible for her. Starling City can be dangerous."

"Starling City is in recovery," Diggle points out, "you haven't had to deal with anything other than a few would be looters since the Undertaking went down. You haven't even looked at that list of yours, and I refuse to believe that you crossed out all the names when I wasn't looking."

"Starling City doesn't need the Hood right now," Oliver says, but the words sound false even to him.

"Really?" Diggle says in that annoyingly perceptive way he has. "Doesn't seem to have stopped you."

"We're going after Floyd Lawton," Oliver insists, "Felicity is searching, hacking every database she can. She'll find him and we'll take him out."

"And in the meantime," Diggle says, "you're going to be satisfied with patrolling the few blocks around Verdant? Give it a rest Oliver, the city needs you now more than ever. There's more corrupt businessmen lining up to bulldoze the Glades than there ever were before Merlyn did half the work for them. You need to get back out there."

"I thought you said I needed balance, to step back."

"You've stepped back a bit too far, don't you think?"

"Maybe I haven't stepped back far enough."

Diggle glares at him.

"It doesn't change the fact," Diggle says, "that you have tied yourself up in knots about Felicity. I've got eyes man, I see the way you've been looking at her."

Oliver tries hard not to grind his teeth. The island did enough damage to his body, there are better ways for him to deal with his frustration than by making it worse.

"I don't want her to get hurt," Oliver says simply. "She doesn't have any way of defending herself."

"I'll train her," Diggle says, "I already am training her. You were too before you started juggling every damn thing in the room to make sure you didn't accidentally touch her."

Damn Diggle and his annoyingly accurate powers of perception.

"I'm not -"

"Tell it to someone who hasn't spent years in love with his brother's widow," Diggle says pointedly. "Takes one to know one, and you are not as slick as you think you are."

Oliver scowls.

"I'm not in love with Felicity."

"Whatever man, I'd just like to have her in the room without you feeling a need to maintain a minimum safe distance."

"I'm not," he insists, but before Diggle can say anything a sharp beeping noise breaks into their conversation.

Oliver blinks, then dives for Felicity's desk. One of the monitors has come to life, a pop-up window flashes red as the alarm sounds.

He reads the screen then feels the bottom fall out his stomach.

It's Felicity's panic button. The one she hides in the case of her smartphone. It's triggered, and it's moving, a GPS signal transmitting her location to them.

Diggle is already typing, pulling up online maps and checking Felicity's illegally accessed network of traffic cameras that cover the city.

"It's a white SUV," he says, "look here, at the intersection of Main and Lincoln, and here again at Jefferson. She's in a white SUV. The windows are tinted but it's the only vehicle that matches her GPS markers."

Oliver is already reaching for his jacket - he doesn't have time to pull on the full Hood ensemble, but the motorcycle helmet will do just as well as a disguise here. He slips the radio mic into his ear and runs for the exit.

"Keep tracking her," he yells to Diggle, "once you've locked their destination let me know!"

"I won't lose her," Diggle promises, but Oliver is already out the door.

Her panic button could be discovered at any point, the signal might die. He needs to find her now.

Tires screech as he accelerates out of the club's parking lot. Desperately hoping that he'll make it in time.


	7. Taking chances

It is truly amazing, Felicity thinks, how calm she is right now. If this had happened to her a year ago she would be in pieces on the floor, as it is she was able to press the panic button she built into the side of her smartphone case and hide said phone in her boot before her captors had even closed the door of the car.

It's not that she's not worried, she is. But she feels the same way she did in the back office of that illegal casino, knowing that Oliver was about to break down the door and nothing was going to be able to stop him.

It's very reassuring having a superhero on speed dial. Takes a lot of the stress out of the whole being kidnapped thing.

There are three men in the car with her. Two of them are wearing ski masks. The third is driving and all she can make out about him from her position held down against the backseat of the car is that he has dark hair.

Actually she realises, that's not all she can tell - he's white, male, wide shouldered (at least in comparison to an average man, her recent exposure to Oliver and John's shoulders make this guy look almost weedy). So far he's stayed completely silent unlike the guy whose hand on her neck holds her low against the car seat. He keeps snarling things like "Stay down bitch" and "keep still bitch". If she has the chance she hopes she can get Oliver to break his jaw for her.

The driver seems to know where he's going so he might be local, unlike Mr Pottymouth McHandsy who has a definite New Jersey twang. The two masked men have guns. Plain old hand guns that don't look much different to John's preferred weapon. Even as they threatened her as she walked out of Queen Consolidated on a quest to find just the right kind of salad to make up for the lunch she skipped, part of her brain commented how little flair for drama these guys have.

Not like the other masked men (man) in her life.

She can't turn her head far enough to see much but she thinks they're heading north, out of the city.

The masked gunman in the front seat is pawing through her hand bag, scattering tissues, make up, and half a pack of chewing gun as he goes. He picks up her tablet and tosses it aside.

"Hey," she snaps at him, "that's expensive!"

"Shut up bitch," says McHandsy.

"I can't find her cell," Tosses BagSnatcher says, sounding panicked.

Felicity congratulates herself mentally for palming the phone successfully then realises that they'll realise soon enough there aren't that many places she could have stashed it. Surreptitiously she tries to move her hand towards her ankle boot, planning on hiding the phone under one of the car seats, but McHandsy spots the movement immediately.

"What are you doing?" And if she hadn't just spent the past few months being growled at by Oliver she might be impressed at the amount of menace there is in his voice. She's had more than enough aversion therapy that she can't help but roll her eyes.

McHandsy's hand moves from holding her down to wrenching her up by the scruff of her neck. Her eyes immediately start to water at his painful grip and she hates the fact he'll probably think she's crying.

She realises that the hand he's holding her up with is also the hand that's holding his gun, and that means it's currently pointed away from her and so she lunges, going for his eyes with her fingernails.

The car breaks suddenly and she's thrown forward into the back of the front seats. She loses her breath for a second, then takes a hard hit when McHandsy backhands her with his pistol.

Her head spins and she clutches at her face with her hands, pressing down, trying hard not to whimper. She's not the hero, Oliver is. And how is it fair that's it's only since he walked into her life that she's learned just how painful it is being hit in the face.

McHandsy rears back, obviously about to lash out again and she pulls her arms up around her face, trying to head off the blow.

But it doesn't land. Instead there's a yell above her and she blinks, thinking that this is it, Oliver's here to rescue her, but it only takes her a second to see that salvation has a different source.

The driver, who's face she can now see but would still have difficulty describing because he is oh so average in every single way, has just punched McHandsy, knocking him backwards and away from Felicity. McHandsy is holding his nose through the mask and Felicity feels a perverse stab of hope that it's broken.

Felicity stares, then realises no one's looking at or holding onto her, and she grabs for the door.

There's a click that years of action movies and no small amount of recent experience tells her is the sound of the hammer being drawn back on a gun and she freezes.

"Don't," says a new voice - the Driver. "I'd hate to have to explain to my employers why we had to shoot the most valuable hostage in Starling City."

Felicity risks a glance back, sure enough there's a gun pointed at her head. The Driver's eyes as he looks at her are ice cold (and blue, part of her mind notes, an extra bit of information for the mental list of descriptions she's been compiling). She has no doubt he'll pull the trigger and from this distance there's no way that wouldn't kill her.

"Sit down," he says, and she nods, turning her body sideways into the seat so she is as far away from McHandsy as she can be. She moves slowly, not wanting to risk any sudden movements. The gun looms large in her vision and she wonders how she could have thought that this was any less scary than a bow and arrow. Having any sort of weapon pointed at your head is terrifying.

"Seat belt," he says and she obeys, pulling the buckle over her shoulder slowly. She clicks it into place and places both her hands in her lap.

"Glasses," he says, gesturing at her face.

Her heart sinks, without her glasses she's very short sighted. It'll be almost as bad as being blindfolded. Almost, but not quite.

With a sigh, she takes off her glasses, hands them to him. The world immediately blurs into soft edges and fuzzy colours.

"If you do what you're told," the Driver says, "we won't hurt you."

She nods, not trusting her voice to speak.

"Good girl," he says approvingly and she feels her lip curl in response. "Now, stay still, stay quiet and don't try to escape again."

Felicity nods, and the dark blurry shape that is the Driver says to McHandsy, "Search her. Nicely. If the phone isn't in her bag, it's someone on her person. We need that phone. Find it."

The fuzzy blob that is McHandsy is suddenly there, grabbing at her clothing and groping at her chest. She sits still and lets him, only flinching when he pinches the top of her breast really hard.

"Norris," the driver says, "that's not very nice."

"There's no phone," McHandsy - Norris - says.

"Check her boots," the Driver says and Felicity forces herself to stay still as Norris leans over, close enough that she could kick him in the fuzzy shaped blob he has for a head, and starts running his hands over her chunky ankle boots.

"Got it," Norris says as Felicity feels her cell phone being lifted out of her shoe. She bites her lip, hating the fact the Driver saw through her admittedly flimsy deception. If there had been three men like Norris in the car she'd probably still have the phone. Though, if there were three men like Norris in the car she might have been able to get away already. Or she might have been shot already.

There's a sound like a dull crunch and Felicity knows that her new smartphone, with her hacked OS and the custom apps she built so she could help Oliver save the city, is now in pieces. She hopes they won't bother with the case, won't find the GPS transmitter wedged between the thin layers of decorative plastic but she can't see far enough to check.

She has to hope that on this at least she's smarter than her kidnappers.

There's a sound like a door opening and closing and Felicity guesses that the wreckage that used to be her phone is now nothing more that street trash. She has no idea what the status of the case is.

But she refuses to be frightened. She managed to keep the phone from them long enough that the computer system in the club's basement will have registered her capture. John and Oliver have tracked people down with less than this. They will come for her.

All she has to do is stay alive until then.


	8. Chasing conversation

Diggle's voice in his ear tells him the GPS signals from both Felicity's phone and the tracker in the phone case have gone dead and Oliver swears in a way he hasn't since Slade had to dig a bullet out of him with a pocket knife back in year two of the island.

"Do you have the SUV on camera?" He asks as he swerves the bike around, between and through any gaps in traffic he can find. "Tell me you have a visual, Dig."

"I do," Diggle says and Oliver exhales in relief. They've not lost her yet. There's still time.

"Oliver," Diggle says with a strange tone in his voice, "you left your cell here."

"So what? I've got the radio."

"That's not what I mean Oliver," Diggle replies. "It's ringing."

"Who's calling?"

"Withheld number."

Oliver's blood, which has hardly been running warm since he left the club runs a little bit colder.

"Answer it," he orders. "Put it on speaker beside the microphone."

Diggle does so and Oliver hears the soft beep that marks a connected call.

"This is Oliver Queen," he says, trying for what Felicity calls his bored billionaire voice.

"Mr Queen," a man says, his voice made tinny by the dual channels of radio and cell phone. He sounds English, speaks with the same kind of refined accent Walter had.

"Who am I speaking to?" Oliver asks, trying to sound unlike a man speeding through heavy traffic.

"The person who decides if your pretty little girlfriend gets to keep her head."

"Girlfriend?"

"Blonde, glasses, big eyes?" The man clarifies, "any of this ringing any bells?"

"Felicity. She's not my girlfriend."

"Ah but you care about her, don't you? You two made such a pretty pair at Mummy's trial."

Oliver's fingers tighten on the handlebars. He had known that letting himself be seen in public with Felicity was asking for trouble, but he had anticipated more reporters and fewer kidnappers. It seems Felicity couldn't be in either part of his life without being in danger - both Oliver Queen and the Hood have their own enemies.

"What do you want?"

"Money, dear boy." The man sounds uncomfortably similar to Fyers did in his memories. At least he can be sure that part of his past won't be coming back. Even after he went down with Oliver's arrow in him Slade had taken the time to slice Fyers' throat. Back then the younger Oliver had considered it overkill, these days he appreciates knowing with absolute certainty that his enemies are dead.

Just as this man will be for targeting Felicity.

"How much money?" He asks, trying to sound desperate and not homicidal. "I'll pay anything, just don't hurt her!"

"Fifty million dollars," comes the answer, "wired tonight."

Oliver blinks, considering. The family insurance fund his mother set up when his father opened the Queen Consolidated office in South America doesn't exceed five million. Fifty is far beyond his capability to organise, especially in the next few hours. It's too much. While he'd pay all he has to save her life he knows there's an etiquette to kidnapping, and demanding more money than it's possible to provide suggests this isn't a standard abduction.

"That's not enough time," he says, "I need more time."

"You have eight hours," he's told. "Or in nine she'll be dead."

"Don't hurt her," he says immediately. "I'll get you the money. Just don't hurt her."

"Eight hours Mr Queen. We'll be in touch."

He hears the distinct tone of a hang up - strange in this age of cell phones - then Diggle is back on the line.

"Fifty's pretty high," he says, His thoughts apparently having followed the same path as Oliver's.

"I know," he says, glancing at nearby street signs. "Are they still going north on Connecticut?"

"Traffic cameras haven't shown them turning off," Diggle says, "but you're heading into suburbia, we're about to lose a our line of sight."

"Fifty's too high," Oliver say, musing out loud, "no one has that kind of accessible cash around. I don't have even have access to the family accounts. With my mother in prison most of our assets are frozen."

"Paying the ransom isn't an option," Diggle says, "the cameras have caught that at least one of the guys in the car with her isn't wearing a mask. If they were ever going to let her go they wouldn't want to give her a chance to identify them. I don't know what this is but it isn't a standard snatch and grab."

"When is it ever?"

"I don't know," Diggle pauses. "When you get to North Street turn left. They're already on the overpass and you might be able to get ahead of them."

"Thanks," Oliver acknowledges.

"This feels personal," Diggle says, "they called your cellphone, man, this feels like this is all about you. And when I say you I mean you. Not the masked avenger."

"I think so too," Oliver admits, turning the bike onto North, "but I don't have anywhere near the number of enemies the vigilante does. I was a dumb kid, no one should go to this kind of trouble for me."

"You were a dumb rich kid, and you're still rich."

"Not rich enough. Not for this."

"Why her?" Diggle says, "If someone wanted to hurt you, why take Felicity? Your sister's a much more logical target."

The suggestion hangs in silence between them for a second.

"Diggle -" Oliver says.

"I'm calling her," Diggle interrupts and the radio falls silent.

Oliver grits his teeth and tries to squeeze a bit more speed out of the bike. He needs to get to Felicity. He needs to know his sister's safe. He can't do either alone.

Yet again Felicity is in danger because of him. Dragged into a car, Diggle had said, but essentially whole. At least so far. He doesn't like her chances if this does come down to a financial transaction. As Diggle said, the fact that one of the men wasn't wearing a mask does not bode well.

"She's safe Oliver," Diggle says in his ear. "Thea is safe."

"You spoke to her?"

"I spoke to her. She's fine. I'm sending some of my guys round, make sure she stays that way."

"Thank you," Oliver says, breathing easier. At least Thea is safe. Protected.

As Felicity should have been.

"You've still got the SUV?"

"There's fewer intersections with cameras the further out they go," Diggle says sounding worried. The GPS on your bike still has you blocks from where the cameras say they are. You need to go faster."

"I know," he says, but knowing something and doing it are two completely different things. He's known for months that having Felicity in his life puts her at risk but he never did anything about it. He let her stay because he liked having her around. She was useful and he was selfish. He put her in danger the second he asked her for help, and he kept putting her in danger and now she's somewhere with a gun to her head and he's not there to protect her.

"They should," Diggle says, "be going through the intersection at North and Lombard right about now."

"I can see the Lombard intersection," Oliver says, craning his neck. "There's no white SUV."

"If they're not there, they may have stopped," Diggle says. Even over the thin signal of the radio he can hear Diggle typing, cycling through cameras in the surrounding area.

"I can't see them," he says, "they must be somewhere between North and Chelsea."

Oliver slows the bike as he reaches the intersection, there's no traffic in sight. The road is deathly silent.

"Any alleyways in the area?" Oliver asks, "Underground parking structures? Large doors with ramps?"

"I'm checking," Diggle says. "No alleys, no turnoffs. But Google Earth shows several warehouse loading docks."

"I can see the doors," Oliver says, "but there's no sign of the SUV."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"You gonna start knocking on doors?"

Oliver sets his jaw.

"Look," Diggle says, "I'm on my way. Just keep out of sight. Don't spook them. We'll get her back."

Oliver looks around. This was an industrial neighbourhood once. Now most of what was manufacturing is taken up by a mixture of self-storage facilities and empty buildings. It's an ideal place for kidnappers to hide. No residents, no passing trade. No reason for anyone to be here. His bike might already have been remarked upon.

He stores the helmet and walks the motorcycle back, out of sight around the corner.

"Diggle," he says, "bring the gear. I'm heading for the roof."


	9. Discovering motives

"You asked for how much?" Felicity gasps, hearing the shock and disbelief in her own tone. "You know I'm not rich, right? I'm not anybody. I'm the *IT department*. I am not worth fifty million dollars!"

The Driver doesn't look up from the computer screen in front of him. Or at least Felicity assumes it's a computer screen. The room they're in is dark, and chair she's handcuffed to is far enough away from him that everything is more than a little blurred. But that is a very distinctive blue light on his face, and even in her unfocused state she can see he's sitting at a table looking at something.

She misses her glasses terribly.

"Must I gag you Ms Smoak?" He says in a bored and disinterested tone.

"Nope," Felicity responds immediately. "No, no need for that. I'm just trying to point out the floor in your otherwise excellent plan. The flaw which means you don't get paid and I don't get to go home. That flaw."

"Ms Smoak -"

"I can be quiet," she says, "but I'm only trying to help you."

"Thank you for your consideration," he says, his tone pleasant and not condescending at all. Felicity wonders how he does that. Right now it's a real effort to not have everything she says sound facetious. Maybe there are kidnapper acting lessons. Hostage Comportment 101.

Her brain really does go down some strange tangents in times of stress. At least she hasn't accidentally propositioned him yet. No, she keeps all that special brand of awkwardness for Oliver. And speaking of which, where is he?

He had better get here soon or she's going to take points off for style.

Hands come down hard on her shoulders, startling her enough to make her let out a soft "meep!"

"Come on boss," Norris says from far too close. It's his hands on her shoulders. He's touching her. Felicity shudders and he squeezes tighter. "We've got time, haven't we?" Felicity doesn't know what he's talking about, but she can guess. He's touching her and he's got a very particular tone in his voice and there will not be enough hot baths in the world to clean this memory off her when Oliver rescues her.

"We've already had this discussion," the Driver says, sounding bored. "Shouldn't you be watching the roof?"

"Karl has it."

"Go help him."

"Boss -"

"Oliver Queen is the richest man in the city," the Driver says, "he can afford his own private army. We need your eyes on the roof to keep it secure."

That's interesting, Felicity thinks. For all that these people know enough about her schedule to snatch her off the street, they don't seem to have put together the fact that Oliver is the Hood. But then, they've never been asked to track down urgent information for him on increasingly flimsy premises. Maybe it's only obvious to her.

"Run along now Norris," says a new voice, and Felicity freezes. Just how many people are there in this room with her? People she can't see without her glasses. This voice is British, cultured. For half a second she thinks of Walter, a kind smile with warm eyes. The best boss she's ever had. Until Oliver came along, at least.

But it's not Walter. This voice is cold, and the accent is not quite right. There's a rasp to it that sounds just plain wrong. She's read online that some Brits can tell where someone is from down to the village based on their accent, but about all she can manage is that he sounds like he should be in Downton Abbey or teaching at Hogwarts. Somewhere with spires at the very least.

Norris' hands tighten on her shoulders and she feels his thumb slip past the neck of her shirt to rub the skin.

"Ugh." She can't clamp down on her disgusted wince.

"You and me," he says softly, "we'll get our chance."

Felicity doesn't respond. He's a bully and right now he wants a reaction. The best thing to do is ignore him. And upgrade the broken jaw she was hoping for for him into a cracked skull. Maybe Oliver will bring a baseball bat or something with him so she can deliver the blow herself.

"Norris," the driver reminds. "The roof."

Norris makes a noise of agreement - maybe it was a nod but she has no way of knowing - and is gone.

Her shoulders feel so much lighter without his touch. She hunches them up around her neck, trying to smooth out the extra tension his touch left behind. So different to the last man who touched her there. But that is really not something she wants to think about right now.

She listens to his footsteps withdraw, then turns her head in the direction where she heard Lord Downton Hogwarts speak from.

"How many of you are there in here?" She says, trying to keep her tone light. "And thanks for that, by the way."

"It was uncouth," Lord Hogwarts says.

"Yes, things are much more couth now." Felicity agrees. "Now, seriously, fifty million dollars? Don't you think you should have kidnapped Oliver himself if you wanted that sort of cash? Or, I don't know, the Queen? The actual Queen that is, not just a member of the Queen family."

"Oh Miss Smoak," Hogwarts replies, and Felicity can actually hear the difference between the Ms and the Miss. It feels extra demeaning with the accent. "You're assuming the money is the point of this little escapade. It's not."

"It's not?"

"No my dear."

Felicity has a feeling she's going to regret asking this, but it's not like she's got anything else to do right now.

"So what is the point?"

"Pain."

"My pain?"

"His pain."

So this is about Oliver the man and not Oliver the hooded archer.

"Hurting me won't cause him pain," she says. "I'm just an employee, we're not even friends. Not really." But it's a clumsy lie. Her tongue feels heavier saying it and when he laughs she knows that it sounded just as hollow out loud as it did in her head.

"You have a strange definition of friendship."

"Well," she says, trying to bluster her way through. "I've never painted my nails or drank cosmos with him. Never caught a movie or gone out dancing. I've never even tried to make him watch Firefly with me and that's pretty much a prerequisite if you're going to be my friend."

"You hold his hand," Hogwarts replies. "You provide him with comfort. Comfort he should not have after what he has done."

"And what has he done. To you, obviously. So what is it? I mean, what has he done that could possibly justify kidnapping me - his *IT girl*?"

"Well Felicity," Hogwarts says, and Felicity just knows that the fact they're now on a first name basis is not good. "He has failed this city."

Felicity's blood runs cold. So they do know. But then why are there only 4 of them? Surely anyone who has seen a Starling City news report in the past year knows you don't take on the Hood with less than an army. Unless you're as good as he is, or you think you are.

"You know what that means," Hogwarts says, "and yet you still claim you're not his friend. I think you underestimate yourself Miss Smoak."

"If it's not about money," Felicity says, struggling to keep her voice steady. "What are you going to do to me?"

"The deadline I gave Queen is fictitious," Hogwarts rasps, "the second he appears, the second he sees you and the path is clear and the job is done. That's the second you will die. Right in front of him."

Felicity swallows. Hard.

"How?"

"You cannot see it, but the chair you're sitting on is packed with explosives. Pressure sensitive. No timer, no countdown. I have a remote detonator and there's way to disarm it. At least, not before I press the button."

A bomb. Yet again she's strapped to a bomb. At least this time she didn't know the whole time.

She looks down, trying to make out details but the room is too dark and she just too damn blind without her glasses to see much.

She waits for panic to swell up and overwhelm her, but it doesn't happen. Instead she's back to the strange calm feeling she felt in the car.

"They don't know do they?" She says, "Norris and the other guy. They have no idea who's coming for them."

"They are what you might call collateral damage," Hogwarts says, "window dressing as it were, to make this whole situation appear as it should to an observer."

"And what am I?"

"Revenge."

She closes her eyes, shakes her head. Does this change anything, she asks herself. Does she still belief Oliver and John will come for her, will rescue her. She looks for the answer and is completely unsurprised to find that it's still a yes. She has faith in Oliver like she has in few other things. And while the situation in which she finds herself is direr than expected, all is not yet lost.

She knows he'll come for her.

She just hopes he'll be smarter than Lord Downton Hogwarts thinks he is when he does so.


	10. Differing approaches

Oliver climbs. In the 23 minutes it took Diggle to gather gear and meet him he had already managed to eliminate three buildings from consideration. There had been five remaining and he'd been about to suggest splitting their attention when movement on a nearby roof caught his eye.

And once his eye was caught, a closer look was needed.

Diggle is scouting ground floor access while Oliver makes his way up the side of a nearby building. He uses the corner to shield him from sight but soon realises his caution was unnecessary.

From his current altitude he can see two guards stationed on the roof of the former home of Liberty Shipping, a art-deco logoed freight business long since forced out by larger meaner competitors. They're not manning posts, just wandering around the perimeter, chatting. But they're obviously armed and are dressed the same as Felicity's abductors. One even looks to have his ski mask tucked into the pocket of his jacket.

Oliver watches them as he searches for a convenient ledge, trying to get a sense of their intentions.

He doesn't look down. He'd never been overly fond of heights but he'd learned how to cope on the island. The trick is not to acknowledge that there was a height to fall from. But maintaining that kind of ignorance was a lot easier when there was only his life on the line. Swinging Felicity across an elevator shaft had been unnerving. Thinking what might happen to her if he fell from here and wasn't around to rescue her was the strongest fear he's felt since she told him the news that the East Side of the Glades had taken the most damage. The East Side. Where Laurel was. He'd felt his heart stop for a moment, his worst fears come to life.

And then it was Tommy's death that awaited him in the rubble of CNRI. He'd traded one loss for another.

He really hasn't felt much since.

Just grief and the strange compulsion to hold on to Felicity aside.

And that selfish desire led them here.

"Ground access is too secure," Diggle radios in, his frustration obvious. "Big gates, big doors, big locks - none of which are in a convenient enough location for what C4 we have. There's no way in without taking out a wall."

"Roof has two guards," Oliver replies, "but they're sloppy. Amateurs. They haven't locked down approaches or lines of sight. It's practically an engraved invitation."

He finds his balance on the ledge on which he stands and reaches for his quiver. "I'm going to take them out."

"Wait," Diggle says, suddenly. "Only two guards. Isn't this a little too good to be true?"

"I'll take luck when I find it," Oliver says, nocking an arrow.

"You said 'engraved invitation'," Diggle reminds him, "you don't send those out unless you're expecting company."

"Dig -"

"This smells like a trap," Diggle says, "take a breath and tell me you're not thinking the same thing."

"A trap for who? If they're after the Hood why take Felicity, if it's for me then the roof being vulnerable would hardly make a difference."

"Then they know."

Oliver closed his eyes, thinking. What Diggle was saying made sense. He'd had a harsh enough teacher drill those lessons into him. Never assume an enemy is stupid. Never take the obvious approach. Leaving a way in is the best way to know where the attack will come from.

"Let's say you're right," he says, lowering the bow. "What do we do?"

"This place used to be a warehouse, right?" Diggle says, "And it looks old, like 1920s old. I read somewhere about twenties freight companies using tunnels to smuggle liquor during prohibition."

"That's a hell of a stretch, Dig," Oliver pointed out. "You're reaching."

"Have you got fifty million dollars?"

"Not that I can access in the next six hours."

"Well then," Diggle says, "get your ass down here and help me find a way in that doesn't have 'It's a trap' written all over it."

"Acknowledged," Oliver replies.

He looks back at the guards on the roof. It took him 17 minutes to climb high enough to take out both easily. He'll give Diggle's idea an hour, then he'll be on his way in through the roof no matter how much like a trap it looks.

After all, sometimes the only way to deal with a trap is to spring it.

"What makes you so special?"

Felicity lifts her head. She can't really make out the features of the man standing nearby, but the dark hair and familiar calm voice suggest it's the Driver.

"Why do you care?"

"I don't."

"Then I've got no reason to answer you." Felicity leans her head back and closes her eyes. She's had the glasses off for too long and she can feel the headache she gets without them coming on. She'd like to rub the bridge of her nose, but her arms are tied down and somehow she doubts the men who want to blow her up in front of Oliver would let her have a hand free long enough to rub away some tension.

"What have you got to lose?"

"Are you kidding me?" She say, letting some of the frustration she feels enter her voice. "You have me tied to a chair on top of a big pile of dynamite and now you want to bond? Take a hike."

He laughs and it sounds real.

She turns her head towards him and squints trying to make out the details of his appearance.

"You're funny," he says, "is that why he likes you?"

"He doesn't like me," she sighs. "We don't have that kind of relationship."

"Like hell," the driver growls. His voice sounds different now, and he seems to realise it, because the next words he says are back in the accent of Blandville, population him. "I've been watching you. We've been watching you."

"So? I've already suffered through one stalker in the form of Petey the security guard. Who should I get the restraining order made out against this time?"

"No names," he says, but he sounds amused. "Did Oliver Queen deal with Petey for you?"

"I do not need Oliver Queen to help me get rid of an annoying pest like Petey."

"Really." The stark disbelief in his tone annoys her so much she decides to answer.

"If you must know," she says as regally as she can, "I hacked his computer and threatened to send the contents of his hard drive to the FBI if he didn't back off."

"And just what did Petey have on there that made him so scared."

"Nothing much, just more porn than any man should know what to deal with. And the sketchy malware that came with it."

"Must have been pretty dodgy porn if he was scared of the feds."

Felicity sighs.

"The malware was worse, really. And… maybe it wasn't the FBI so much as it was his mother. But she was a federal judge, and it worked. He left me alone."

The Driver laughs. Curiously it sounds both warm and bitter. She's never heard a laugh before that sounded quite like it. It doesn't sound like the laugh of a man about to kill her.

"Impressive," he says.

"Thanks." She considers, then thinks what the hell, might as well go for it. "Is it impressive enough to let me go?"

"No," he says, "but I have a better idea what makes you so special."

"Glad I could help." Sarcasm thy name is Felicity.

He chuckles and apparently wanders away. Either that or he has the ability to throw his voice. All things considered she thinks it's more likely to be the first one.

She sits there, waiting for the next thing to happen. Sometimes it seems like all she does is wait. It was one of the reasons she was proud that she had been able to deal with annoying Petey herself. He'd always been hanging around, and when he started crossing the line, breaking into her office to leave creepy little gifts, watching her all the time and trying to find out where she lived from the employee database, she'd gotten a bad vibe. Bad vibes being what they are, she hacked into his file and saw he had two citations on record for bothering young female employees. In the end she'd had no problem with sending a full report of Petey's actions (complete with webcam footage from the time he'd tried to break into her computer, which showed the level of stupidity she'd been dealing with. Her computer, really?) to a friend in the Queen Consolidated Security department. As promised she left his porn alone. His mother probably wouldn't have appreciated all the cosplay anyway.

But if Oliver had been in her life then would she have told him?

Probably not, she admits to herself. He would probably have broken Petey's fingers, when what he needed was a rap on the knuckles. And someone to take his internet rights away.

Sometimes Oliver went too far. Though she admitted internally that however he got her out of this, she wasn't going to quibble over the method. Anyway that didn't end with her exploding was fine by her.


	11. Surprising explosions

The explosion catches her by surprise.

She has enough time think that she really is very surprised that she's going to die after all, before she realises that, no, she's not, the explosion came from somewhere else, somewhere on her left, and then she feels surprise at that too.

The air fills up with dust and her vision, what little of it she has without her glasses, drops from blurry and indistinct to absolute blindness.

She fights her rising panic and tries to breathe shallowly.

"Felicity," Oliver says in her ear, so near and so close that she jumps and shudders at the same time. His hands skim over her shoulders and down to her wrists, feeling for her bonds. "Hold still, I'm going to cut you loose."

"No!" She cries instantly, "Don't! There's a bomb! It's pressure sensitive. They said if I move-"

Oliver's hands freeze on her.

"What sort of bomb?"

"They didn't say! And I can't see!" She hates the whine that she hears in her voice but she can't deny it's justified. This has not been a good day.

Oliver pulls away from her. She can just about make out the shape of him dropping to the ground, looking under her chair.

She has a sudden surge of hope that maybe it was all a ploy to keep her in the seat, prevent her from making another escape attempt - then he swears under his breath, low and vicious, and her heart sinks.

"Pressure sensitive," he grits. "And there's a remote trigger?"

"Lord Downton Hog - I mean, the British guy has it."

"I can't disarm this," Oliver says, "I need Diggle. And I need that trigger."

He's hesitating. The air is clearing, time is running out. He squeezes her arm once, an echo of the comforting touch she's been offering him since half the Glades crumbled.

But she doesn't feel comforted. In fact she has the worst feeling this touch has more in common with a goodbye than anything she's offered him in the past.

She's tells herself it's her imagination. Peers through the dust and her own weak eyesight to try and see him.

"Diggle," she hears him say, presumably into his radio. "We have a problem - did you hear?"

He pauses, listens.

"Can you disarm it? Get up here. Now!

"Felicity," he says, turning back her. "I don't want to leave you, but I have to find that trigger."

"Go," she breathes, granting him the permission he needs.

"Everything is going to be fine." He reassures her, but she has a feeling the words are much for his benefit as hers.

He squeezes her wrist one more time and is gone, retreating into the dissipating dust cloud.

Felicity tries to stay calm, control her breathing. She is absolutely not going to panic, he didn't leave her here to die. John is on his way and together-

"Wasn't that touching?" Lord Downton Hogwarts says by her ear, in the exact same way Oliver had mere minutes before. "But as it seems your paramour has a plan, we'll need to shift this little scenario into stage two."

Felicity yelps in surprise then the coldly analytical part of her brain points out that this is who Oliver is searching for and she opens her mouth to yell for him.

Hogwart's hand slaps down hard; stinging her lips and pulling her head back roughly against his shoulder.

"Tsk tsk," he tuts, "no warnings. That wouldn't be sporting."

Felicity of a year ago would have frozen, Felicity of yesterday might have panicked, but Felicity of right now has had enough.

Her mouth is half open. His fingers are pressing against her lips - and her teeth.

She jerks her jaw down and bites. Hard.

Hogwarts yowls and yanks his hand away.

Felicity spits warm fluid out of her mouth - yuck was that blood? And has time to yell "Oliver!" before she's hit hard in the head and everything goes dark.

Her last conscious thought is that she's getting really tired of everyone underestimating her.

Oliver runs. Before the island he'd run to keep in shape, look good for Laurel or whoever he was flirting with that week. On the island he'd run to survive. Now he ran for Felicity.

His relief at finding her unharmed had quickly been replaced with dread when he saw the contraption she was tied to. Back on the island, Slade had taught him the basics of explosives - materials, detonators, but there had never had been any need to learn complicated mechanisms or any method of defusing something other than either running very fast in the opposite direction or grinding out the spark on a fuse of dynamite (After Fyers's death they'd found he had trunks of the stuff for no real reason either he, Slade or Shado could fathom) with his foot. Now he felt the absence of that knowledge acutely and hoped that Diggle had the skills he himself lacked.

The air in the main room of the warehouse is still thick with dust, a useful by-product of the explosive entrance Diggle had engineered.

It clouds his vision, but years of night missions had taught him how to use his other senses to compensate.

"Dig," Oliver says, low and intent, "tell me you're there, tell me you can diffuse that thing."

Silence.

Oliver pauses, bow ready, arrow nocked. He listens hard and hears nothing.

"Diggle," he says, trying to keep his voice as quiet possible, "report."

Nothing.

"Shit," he swears.

Oliver spins on his heel, intending to return for Felicity, find Diggle, but he doesn't make it a step.

Something hard and heavy comes out of nowhere to hit him in the face. It's a metal tube or bat, his mind catalogues as he sprawls backwards, caught entirely by surprise.

Oliver shakes his head, trying to clear the stars he's definitely not seeing. He shifts into a crouch, one hand on his bow, the other pulling a knife from his belt. And waits.

The second attack comes from the side, the bat again. He slips under it and steps inside, bringing up the blade, intending to punch it up into his attacker's armpit.

But his blow is blocked, and the counter strike to the back of his right knee knocks him off balance.

He steps back, eyes searching the murky darkness around him, ears straining for some hint of where his attacker is lurking.

The next attack is from the rear, but he anticipates the motion and is able to use his attacker's momentum against him, flipping him forward to land heavily on the ground.

Oliver advances, intending to knock out the downed man before he has a chance to get up, but when he reaches the place where his opponent landed, he's already gone.

Oliver readies an arrow. But there's no target.

He spins in place, searching the darkness.

He hears a soft cough and almost fires. The cough comes again, and this time he identifies it.

Diggle.

Oliver strides across the room, searching for his friend. He finds Diggle slumped against a wall.

"Dig?"

Diggle moans in response, not really conscious.

Oliver pulls Diggle's arm over his shoulder, lifts him to his feet, and tries to focus on his next move.

This is bad, he needs Diggle but the former soldier is out for the count. There's no one to disarm the bomb, no one to rescue Felicity.

As if triggered by the thought, her scream cuts through the darkness.

"Oliver!"

He turns. He's caught in indecision – the injured friend here or the trapped one there? His pause is infinitesimal, but before he can choose his path, the decision is taken from him.

The explosion blows Oliver and Diggle backwards, slamming them both into a wall hard enough for Oliver to lose his breath. His head spins. He can hear Diggle groaning beside him, the explosion seemingly having brought him back to consciousness.

"What the hell?"

Then it hits him. The explosion. The bomb. Felicity.

He sdurges forwards, coughing as he staggers across the room, all thoughts of stealth forgotten.

And he sees – nothing.

The bomb destroyed the chair, took out walls, scattered debris.

And body parts.

There's nothing recognisably her, just blood and flesh, but he can't breathe all the same.

He failed her.

And she died.


	12. Grieving losses

Sirens echo through the empty neighbourhood.

Oliver knows they only have minutes before the police sweep them up.

He takes stock of the situation; they need to leave, Diggle isn't in any state to drive and they came here separately.

He thinks. The plates on his bike are fake - it can't be tied back to him, so he helps Diggle into the car, then goes around to the driver's side.

He feels numb. This is nothing like the hot grief of Tommy's death or the anger he felt when his father pulled the trigger.

This is emptiness. Loss, pure and simple.

Part of him is missing.

He drives on autopilot; allowing his instincts to guide him back to the club. As they pass into more inhabited areas of town the traffic picks up. People going about their day; driving home from work, going to meet friends.

He glances at the clock and sees that it's barely 7pm.

He has no idea how things could have gone so wrong is such a short space of time. With all his experience and training, he never thought he'd be facing a scenario where he felt so completely at sea.

Lost.

Gone.

Felicity is dead.

And it's all his fault.

"Why?"

The voice sounds broken, bruised. It takes Oliver over a minute to realise he's the one who is speaking..

"I don't know, Oliver," Diggle says from the passenger seat. His voice is paned and his eyes are closed, his head tilted back. Both of them are covered in scrapes and bruises - not to mention dust and dirt - but Diggle's skin has an unhealthy greyish tinge to it, and Oliver finds that despite everything else he's not feeling right now, he's still worried about his friend.

Felicity would worry. She'd tell them to go to the hospital. Head wounds are tricky and whoever it was must have hit Diggle pretty hard in order to take him out. The man has a head like a rock.

"We're going to the hospital," Oliver decides.

"No," Diggle says, opening his eyes and fixing Oliver with a glare. "We will find them and we will kill them. Hospital comes later."

"Your head-" Oliver starts.

"Is fine," Diggle insists. "Besides there's no way in hell I'm leaving you alone right now. She wouldn't want that."

"She wouldn't want you to die from bleeding in your brain either," Oliver retorts.

"You can mix me up some of your magic herbs," Diggle replies. "But I am not leaving your side."

Oliver says nothing - what is there to say? - and Diggle seemingly takes this as agreement. He shifts in his seat, obviously trying to get comfortable. Oliver watches him surreptitiously, wondering if he should drive straight to the hospital anyway.

"Tell me what happened," Diggle says suddenly. "I was searching the rooms off that corridor, as we agreed. I heard you find her, heard her tell you about the bomb and i was on my way when the lights went out. I woke up covered in brick dust and you tell me she's dead. How?"

Oliver stares at the road. He's nowhere near ready to tell this story but Diggle has more of a right to it than anyone. Apart from Felicity's family.

Someone will have to tell Felicity's family.

He feels a pain in his chest at the thought.

Felicity's family

"Oliver," Diggle snaps. Something tells Oliver this is not the first time Diggle has tried to get his attention in the last few seconds. "I need to know! What went wrong?"

"I found her," Oliver says through dry lips. "She was cuffed to a chair that was also a bomb. Pressure sensitive. She said that if she got up, it would go off." It easy to tell Diggle things he already knows. The rest will be harder.

He licks his lips, trying to find the words to tell this story.

"I called for you to come."

Diggle nods, obviously matching Oliver's story with his own memories.

"There was a trigger. She said the British guy had it. I told her I'd come back, that I wasn't leaving her. I told her I would get the trigger and everything would be fine and-"

"Oliver."

Oliver can hear the crack in his own voice but he can't stop now. If he doesn't finish the sentence he might never say it out loud.

"I left her. I left there strapped to a bomb and went off to play hero."

"Oliver," Diggle chastises.

"I didn't get more than twenty feet before someone came at me with a baseball bat," Oliver continues. "I tried to take him out but he was too good, he got away. I found you, I heard her scream and then -"

He can't say it.

He absolutely can't say it.

If he says it, it's real.

"She screamed for me, she needed me," he says instead, "and I was about to go to her and -"

"The bomb went off," Diggle says grimly.

"Yeah."

"You didn't see it?"

"No."

"Then she could be-"

"She could be what, Dig?"

Diggle squares his jaw. His skin color is improving but he still looks like a wreck.

"She might not be dead."

"She screamed and the room exploded."

"We don't know what happened," Diggle insists. "We didn't see. We don't know."

"We know what happened," Oliver says, "I brought her into this and it killed her. I killed her."

"You can't think like that," Diggle says, "you'd have died of your bullet wounds months ago without her."

"She'd be alive."

"Hundreds wouldn't," Diggle reminds him. "She talked Lance through disarming the earthquake machine and saved half the Glades. She's saved hundreds of people."

"I'd swap all of their lives for hers," Oliver says and is amazed to realise that he means it. "She was special."

"You've got to hope," Diggle insists but Oliver has heard enough.

"No. I don't have to hope. Hope nearly killed me on the island more than once, and maybe it should have. Without me, she'd still be alive."

"Oliver," Diggle emplores. "You can't think that."

"It's true," Oliver says. "You know it as well as I do."

Diggle lapses into silence.

"We're almost at the club," Oliver says. "I won't open tonight. We'll get cleaned up and we'll figure out who did this."

Diggle nods.

Oliver guides the car through the last few turns.

"We'll figure out who did this," Oliver repeats. "And then we'll kill them."

"Damn right," Diggle agrees.

Oliver parks the car and walks around to help Diggle out.

They cross the short distance to the club side entrance slowly. Diggle obviously doesn't want to lean on Oliver, but Oliver doesn't give him a choice.

They're all each other has now.

The thought consumes Oliver. He thinks back to when it was just him against the world, then just him and Diggle. He never felt empty then. Not in the same way he does now.

"She liked me," he says suddenly.

"Yes," Diggle says, looking at him intensely. "She did."

"I liked her," Oliver admits, "a lot. Maybe not in the same way."

Diggle makes an uncomplimentary noise.

"I don't know," Oliver says. "I was scared she would get hurt if she stayed. I didn't want that. And it happened anyway."

"Oliver -" Diggle says.

"I was wrong."

"Oliver-" Diggle insists.

"What?"

"Oliver," Diggle hisses. "I did not leave that door open."

Oliver eyes follow Diggle's gesture; the door to the club is ajar. Open just a few inches in an inviting and suddenly sinister way.

"They never got their money," Diggle says.

"This was never about money," Oliver snaps, and leaving Diggle to support himself, he pulls his bow from his back and reaches for an arrow.

"Careful now," Diggle says, "don't be reckless."

Oliver ignores him, hooking one foot around the edge of the door and pulling it wide, while keeping his body to the side, avoiding the dangerous silhouette Slade had taught him about.

Nothing happens.

Oliver glances back to Diggle.

He has a gun in his hands, but those hands are wavering.

"Stay here," he orders, but Diggle shakes is head.

Oliver glares, but Diggle just gestures towards the open door with his weapon and an impatient expression.

Oliver leads the way inside, keeping to the what shadows there are, fully aware that Diggle is six feet behind him and is more vulnerable than ever before.

Just like Felicity was.

There's a light on the bar. A single spotlight in the darkness of Verdant.

Oliver knows a trap when he sees one, but he also knows, given the light from the door and the fact that neither he nor Diggle are operating at full capacity, that this whoever this is could probably have taken them both out from a distance the second they stepped inside the bar.

He pauses, then lowers the bow.

"What are you doing?" Hisses Diggle.

"If he wanted us dead," Oliver says, pushing his hood down, "we'd be dead."

"Oliver!" Diggle says, not lowering the gun.

"Put it down Dig," Oliver says, "there's nothing else to do."

"You always had good insight," a new voice says.

Oliver pauses and shake his head, almost in denial.

"I learned quickly," he says to the darkness.

"Oliver," Diggle warns.

"We're outmatched Dig," Oliver says, slowly raising his hands.

"I'd listen to him if I were you."

Diggle glares, but at a nod from Oliver he holsters the gun, and raises his hands too.

"Who?" He asks, but Oliver doesn't bother to answer. There's nothing he could say that would make sense anyway. He's never told anyone the truth about what really happened on the island. It was just another thing he didn't want to deal with.

Another thing he thought he left in the past.

"It was you," he realises suddenly. "You took her. You killed her."

His hands curl into fists in the air. He feels the nails dig into the skin of his palms and remembers Tommy's funeral, Felicity's hand in his, her smiling drunkenly at him from her perch on the bar.

"I'll kill you," he promises.

"Why Oliver," Slade Wilson says, stepping out of the darkness, a gun in one hand and the ever present sword in the other, "you already tried that. What makes you think it'll work out better for you this time?"


	13. Making plans

She wakes up with the driest mouth she's ever had and gasps, her hand automatically reaching out, searching for the water bottle she always keeps beside her bed.

It's not there.

Felicity shifts, reaching out blindly, then her hand comes to an abrupt stop, as something metal prevents her from moving further.

She opens her eyes to see her wrists locked into a pair of handcuffs, looped over an old metal pipe.

She's slumped against a wall in a room with barely any light. Her hands are cuffed to the pipe slightly above her, but her feet are free. She shuffles around, pushing with her legs until she's sitting in as comfortable a position as she can be.

She pulls on the cuffs, testing, but they don't move.

About the only positive thing she could say about her current situation is that she doesn't appear to be connected to any kind of explosive. But still, this is, in no way, a good place to be.

"Well," she says out loud, her voice as dry and dusty as her throat, "shit."

She's still not wearing her glasses but this room is small enough that she can still make out a lot of details. Or maybe her eyes are finally adjusting. There are no windows. Only one door that she can see. No door handle so it must be locked from the outside. One bare flickering light bulb casts the minimum amount of illumination possible.

The walls are made of old red brick and some of the mortar is crumbling.

If it's crumbled enough, maybe the pipe she's chained to could come free, and then she'd-

Well, she would still be handcuffed and locked in a small dingy room but it would definitely be better than being handcuffed, locked in and immobilised in a small dingy room.

She'll take anything right now that will improve that.

Felicity gets to her feet. She notices as she does so that she's filthy. Her skin is covered in dust, her clothes coated with the same and the neck of her shirt is torn. She's barefoot, having lost her shoes, but thinking back, she can't remember wearing them since the back seat of the kidnappers' SUV.

Still it's probably better she's not in her heels right now, she's unsteady enough on bare feet and she might need to run when Oliver gets here and rescues her.

Oliver.

The thought of him sends a pang through her, swiftly followed by the thought that he has already tried to rescue her and yet here she is obviously not yet rescued.

Oh they are going to have words next time she sees him. She is totally going to take rescue points off for him failing to actually rescue her and that whole thing were she almost exploded.

Felicity pauses, memories coming back to her. She really did just almost explode - its not a figure of speech or a metaphor.

Lord Downton Hogwarts tried to gag her with his hand, she bit him, he hit her, and she blacked out. She has a few hazy memories of loud noise, pressure in her ears and being dragged across the floor, but she can't quite make sense of them.

The bomb did go off though, that she is sure of.

Hogwarts had said that she would only live long enough for Oliver to watch her die. Obviously that didn't happen, as here she is. Alive.

So why did the bomb go off?

A cold ball of fear forms in her stomach. What if the bomb went off because Oliver was in range? What if Hogwarts set it off to kill him, not her? What if Oliver is dead?

The ball of fear seems to twist, unwrapping like a flower and sending out cold tendrils throughout her body.

What if Oliver is dead?

The fear suddenly feels like nausea, threatening to surge up her throat. She clamps down on it, letting out an involuntary sound that in no way sounds like a sob.

What if Oliver is dead?

She feels her eyes threatening to well up with tears. She squeezes them closed, trying to control her emotions with the breathing techniques John taught her.

Breathe in.

And out.

And in

Out.

In.

Felicity gets a hold of herself. She's still scared, still close to panic but she can't let it control her.

She has things to do.

Firstly, she's going to get out of these handcuffs. Then this room. She doesn't know how but she's going to do it.

Then she will rain down bloody vengeance on Downton Hogwarts and the Driver and any one else involved in their little plan.

They will rue the day they crossed a woman with access to the databases she knows about. Homeland Security watch lists will be but the tip of the iceberg of cyber and virtual destruction she will wreak upon their lives.

But, first things first.

Felicity makes sure of her balance, the lifts one foot to rest on the wall above the pipe. She hops back, bending over so her arms are fully extended, her entire body weight pulling against the cuffs, and the pipe.

Then she pulls with her arms, pushes with her leg and tries to use every once of strength she has to rip the old pipe away from the crumbling mortar.

Nothing happens.

She does it again. The cuffs are cutting into her wrists. A thin trickle of blood starts to drip from her left hand.

But she doesn't stop.

Instead she pulls again.

And again.

And finally, just as she's about to give up hope, the pipe moves.


	14. Forging alliances

Oliver stares.

"It's you," he says, "But it's not you."

He narrows his eyes, peering through the darkness at a man he'd once called friend. The man standing in Verdant has Slade's voice. He has Slade's build and mannerisms, but the face is different. It's as if someone made a bad wax work of the former ASIS agent.

"Don't you recognise your handiwork?"

"My handiwork?"

The man's mouth twists. Oliver watches as the skin seems to stretch, pulled unnaturally down by the expression. It's as if his skin is superimposed over his face, rather than being part of it. It seems to have smoothed over the normal nooks and crannies that give a face character, making him look unnatural and far too bland to be human. It's like looking at a department store mannequin.

"What the hell?" Oliver hears Diggle say behind him.

"Don't you like it?" The man says, gesturing at his face with the sword.

"Artificial skin," Oliver realises. "Why do you have artificial skin?"

"Not much of a choice In the matter," says Slade, and Oliver can see it is Slade now. Slade wearing a shabby approximation of his own face. "You left me with burns over 60% of my face. 40% of my upper body. Lost most of the vision in my right eye too."

"I thought you died," Oliver says.

"There was more than one day," Slade says, "when I wished I had."

"Shado died," Oliver says, feeling the old twinge of pain and regret just like be always does when he thinks of her. He wonders if one day this great loss he feels about Felicity will be just another twinge. If he'll ever be able to look back and have her death not break his heart. He can't see how that's possible. "I thought that missile took out both of you in the jeep - there were two bodies - badly burned..."

"So you guessed?" Slade sneers. "After all we did for you, you let an assumption stand as proof of our deaths?"

"I knew it was her," Oliver says, "But your body - or what I assumed was your body - was nothing but a husk. Burned beyond recognition. It was the right size. The clothes looked like yours."

"One of Fyers' former men," Slade says, "he tried to ambush Shado and take the plane. I'm sure you recall how well that used to go. She took him hostage, thought he might have some intel on Fyers' mysterious benefactor."

"Did he?"

"Never did get to find out," Slade sneers, "because you didn't live up to your end of the bargain and a bloody missile came down on the road and blew up the jeep."

"It's not that simple," Oliver says, "there was more resistance around the launcher than we expected: they fired one before I was able to replace the chip. I wasn't fast enough. Shado's death and your injuries were my fault, and I'll carry the blame for that my whole life, but they were never my intention."

"You never came back," Slade says, "you left me there to die. In agony. Do you have any idea how painful burns are?"

"I searched for you," Oliver replies, "I searched for both of you, and I found the jeep with the bodies. After that, what was there left to search for? I was sure you were dead."

"You were wrong."

"Yes I was. I see that now," Oliver admits, "but Slade, it's been years. I spent two more years on that Island waiting for a way off. If you were there too why didn't you find me?"

"I wasn't on the island."

"You got away?"

"Seems Fyers' partners had the same issue with identifying bodies as you do. They evac-ed me. They offered me medical care. I wasn't in the frame of mind to refuse their terms."

"You got away," Oliver says, "Shado died and I spent two more years in that hell - by myself. What is it you think I owe you? Why are you here? Why take Felicity? Why kill her?"

"Orders man," Slade says, "but I have to say, these ones I've got no problem with. You left me for dead, I left you to die. You killed Shado, I took your little blonde chit. She's feisty. Nearly bit a finger off of my partner there."

"Was." Oliver says, setting his jaw. "You killed her."

"Nah," Slade laughs, "all that blame is on you. Bringing a civilian into this life. At least with you I had no choice. Slim pickings on that island of ours. But you signed her death warrant, not me."

Oliver steps forward involuntarily, his hands moving down to a guard. Ironically the first guard Slade ever taught him.

"Now now," Slade laughs, levelling the gun at Oliver's head, "don't be hasty Queen."

"Oliver," Diggle warns, but his voice sounds thin.

"Hey now," Slade looks past Oliver to Diggle, "You might want to take a seat mate. You're looking a bit out of sorts."

Oliver looks over his shoulder to see Diggle wavering; standing unsupported under Slade's watch has obviously taken a lot out of him.

"If he sits," Oliver says, looking between his former partner and his current one, "will you shoot him?"

"Depends on how he sits."

"How about slowly," Diggle says, his injuries not getting in the way of his attitude. He leans back against the bar, using it to support his slow descent to the floor. Once he's off his feet he leans his head back and breathes deeply, obviously in pain.

Slade looks from Oliver to Diggle and back again.

"Can't say I'm too impressed with my replacement."

"Shut up," Oliver snaps.

"At least your little blonde girl's something to look at. This guy," Slade sniffs, "weak."

"Weak my ass," Diggle says, but he doesn't move. "Come over here and say that to me."

"You do have a think for the feisty ones," Slade says, "don't ya?"

"You and me are gonna have words," Diggle manages. "Soon as I get up the energy to come over there."

"I'll be waiting," Slade promises. "I look forward to it."

Oliver looks at Diggle, injured because of him, and thinks of Felicity, dead because of him.

"You sound proud," Oliver says, "proud that you killed her."

"Once a fool, always a fool," Slade sneers, "Killing blondie was never the aim. I just wanted to see if you'd check the wreckage any better when it's someone you claim to love. You really do never learn, do you?"

Oliver stares at him blankly. Hope flares in his chest, but he's had hope dashed too many times to believe in it. No matter how much he wants to.

"What do you mean?" He says, keeping his tone level.

"She's not dead. She's far too useful to be dead. Unlike that one there." Slade shakes his head, sneeringly dismissive of Diggle.

"She's not…?" Oliver head swims. He doesn't want to care how, but how? Can it be true?

"She's not dead. But she will be." Slade licks his lips. On the face he has now it's grotesque. "My employers - or rather, I should say, my former employers - planned to do almost exactly what they did; take her to hurt you, kill her to hurt you. I, however, have a more creative approach. I took her to hurt you, I saved her to hurt you, and now you'll do whatever I want or I'll kill her or maybe even give her back to them, all to hurt you."

"Felicity's alive?" Diggle groans.

"For now." Slade says, sounding remarkably proud of himself.

Felicity's alive. Felicity is alive.

Oliver feels emotions well up inside him like boiling water. He clamps down on them, hard. They're not out of the woods yet - she might be alive but she's not here, not safe.

"Why?" He asks and is proud of the fact that he keeps his voice steady.

"It's all about hurting you Queen," Slade says. "I played the odds - right now anything you do is a win for me. One one level or another."

Oliver closes his eyes. He thinks of blonde hair and a warm smile. Thinks of moments not had and words not said.

Thinks of how she would never have been in this position to begin with if it wasn't for him.

"Where is she?"

"Somewhere safe," Slade says, "but I'm the only one who knows, and without me, she's got the length of time it takes a human to die of thirst. So keep that in mind when you think about coming for me. I die, she dies."

"You bastard," Diggle groans.

Oliver looks at Slade, and sees only the grinning monster he is now, not the man he once was.

"What he said," Oliver says, jerking a hand at Diggle.

"Say what you like," Slade laughs, "but for now, I own you."

"I want to see her."

"Uh-uh," Slade says, waving his sword for emphasis. "That's not how this works."

"You have to give me something, Slade," Oliver tries, holding out his hands in a non-threatening gesture. "I need to know she's okay."

"Ha!" Slade laughs, "I don't have to do shit. You don't believe me and do exactly what I say, she dies. You kill me, she dies. You get me what I want, I'm happy, she lives. All three are wins are for me but only one is for you. So I don't care if you believe me, rich boy, that's all on your head."

Oliver considers, looking over his shoulder to Diggle. The former solider sits collapsed against the bar, but his eyes are clear and Oliver can read agreement there.

"Okay," he says, turning back to Slade, "what do you want me to do?"


	15. Planning attacks

Felicity sits by the door. Her hands are still cuffed, but she holds the broken pipe from the wall all the same. She is determined to use it on someone.

She's taken several practice swings; she thinks she has this down now. Plant the feet, turn the body, put her hips and her back into the swing.

Turn.

Or she thought, and she stood ready to take out a knee cap, disable her captor and run.

For hours.

But no one came.

Sometime after the hour three she sat down - on the side of the door where the hinges are, so she can use it to her advantage. She's not stupid - she's going to take every chance she has.

So she waited.

And waited.

She's waiting still.

When she got free she was full of adrenalin. She screamed with joy as the the pipe came free. She even hit the door with it several times, despite the fact she understands engineering theory pretty well and knew the effect it would have would be between slim and none.

It was none.

Now she's just tired.

Felicity sits, slumped against the wall.

She thinks about what she'll do when her captor arrives. She wonders if it's be the Driver or Downton Hogwarts.

She thinks about the self defence techniques Diggle taught her. She's not sure how many she remembers. Does she grab and twist or twist and grab?

She thinks about Oliver. She wonders if he's dead.

After a while she starts mentally planning upgrades to Oliver's servers. He could do with a multi-level firewall and she should write some defences for it. Some new algorithms.

She thinks about the trojans she could write to ferret out the information he could use. She plans social engineering tricks to trap his enemies.

She thinks about whether she needs a new mouse. She's never been a fan of the ergonomic ones but she can't deny they make sense.

Her back has been hurting her recently.

Maybe she has carpol tunnel. Or something.

An ergonomic chair might help.

Her mouth is dry.

In fact her mouth has never quite stopped being dry. Ever since she woke up.

She wrenched herself free of the wall, but she has no way to get through this door.

It was a hard thing to acknowledge but there it is.

She's not getting through this door until someone opens it.

But once someone opens it, she will take their kneecaps out.

Assuming she hasn't died of thirst by then.

She hates this room.

She's locked in this room and there's nowhere to go.

Soon enough, she knows, she's going to have to make a choice between which corner to pee in.

She also knows just how long it takes a person to die without liquids.

But for now she has her weapon, she has her anger, and anyone who walks through that door trying to hurt her will regret it.

For now.


	16. Listing demands

Slade has a list of demands.

Written down, typed up and printed out. Oliver, keeping his temper firmly in check, reads it, taking in each item and trying to judge how difficult it would be to acquire.

Some would be easy - Oliver kept a sample of Vertigo on ice for future comparison purposes, and Felicity has already hacked the blueprints of the Unidec earthquake device. But others are more complex - his supply of herbs from the island is almost depleted, and access to Malcolm Merlyn's safe room of toys is close to impossible with the police having emptied the entire room into an evidence locker.

"What is this?" Oliver says, recognising item after item related to his activities since returning to Starling City. "How long have you been watching me?"

"How long have we been watching you, you mean?" Slade laughs, "I'm not sure we ever stopped."

Oliver glares but Slade just laughs harder.

"Not all of this is achievable in two days," he points out.

"I never said two days."

"You said," Oliver replies through gritted teeth, "that I have until she dies of dehydration."

"That might be less than two days," Slade says, offhand and uncaring.

Oliver reminds himself that hitting Slade, while satisfying, wont get him any closer to rescuing Felicity.

"What can I do to extend the deadline?"

"I don't know," Slade says, " what can you do?"

"Slade," Oliver replies, letting some of the desperation seek into his voice. "What will keep her alive?"

"Water."

"And how do I get her water?"

"I'm glad you asked," Slade says, "I have a list of requests. Personal gifts from you to me."

"Another one?" Diggle groans, "you're worse than my ex. Always with the lists."

Oliver waits, but Slade doesn't elaborate.

"Slade," he says finally, "what do you want?"

"Money," Slade says, smacking his lips. "Shall we say one million for every extra hour she lives?"

"Done," Oliver says. A few million he can easily organise from the hostage fund, and every extra minute she breathes is time he can use to find her. "But I need to know what my money is buying."

Slade eyes him.

"No," he says, "not you. You stay."

Oliver opens his mouth to protest but then Slade points at Diggle and says, "Him."

"He's injured," Oliver protests. "He's barely conscious."

"All the more reason for me to take him over you. Dead weight beats dead me."

"I'll do it," Diggle says.

"No," Oliver insists, "leave him alone. Take me."

Slade laughs

"Queen, I wouldn't take you if my life depended on it." He crows, "I made you too bloody dangerous. He, on the other hand," Slade adds, waving a hand dismissively at Diggle, "him I'll take."

Oliver glares then subsides, holding his hands out, placatingly.

"Okay, look just be careful," he says, "I can't lose him too."

"You won't," Slade says, "so long as he behaves."

Diggle groans. Personally Oliver can't help but think its a little theatrical but he keeps his thoughts to himself. He's just hopeful that what he thinks might be happening is actually happening.

Slade turns to Oliver, considering.

"I'm going to offer you a choice Queen," he says, "I can secure you here, but then you lose the time to start work on my Christmas list. Or you can swallow this," he holds up a small specimen bottle containing a large pill, "and start tracking down my gifts like jolly old Saint Nick. But there are conditions."

Oliver regards the pill.

"What is it?"

"GPS tracker," Slade shrugs. "It's linked to a map. I'll only let you go if I know where you are at all times. That's my deal breaker. You waste both of our time, or you take the tracker and I keep tabs."

Oliver looks at pill.

"I should warn you," Slade says, "there may a few extra ingredients in there with the tracker. If I see you coming for me, or even veering off course, I'll detonate and Blondie don't be the only one who's dead."

"I'll do it." Oliver agrees.

"Oliver," Diggle objects.

"I'll do it," Oliver repeats.

"Thought you would," Slade says and tosses the specimen bottle to him.

"This is a bad idea Oliver," Diggle says, warningly.

"If it saves her," Oliver replies, and throws the pill back, swallowing it dry. "Make sure she's okay," he says.

"I'm not going anywhere near her," Slade says, "until you are a minimum of 5 miles away. On foot. Run on now, rich boy."

Behind Slade, Diggle nods to Oliver.

Oliver turns, pulls up the Hood and runs. Five miles is only a long way comparatively, and with every step he takes, he prays to deities he long since abandoned to safeguard Felicity.

And Diggle, who he's not entirely sure has the cards for the hand he's about play

Pray for all of them.


	17. Faking weakness

Diggle keeps his eyes half closed as he watches the Australian pace around the inside of the club.

Time is passing and he's getting more than a little concerned that Verdant's staff will be arriving soon to find a gun-toting madman with a face like Frankenstein's monster waiting for them.

But they have to deal with one problem at a time. And right now the pressing issue is getting close enough to - what did Oliver call him? Sade? Slade? - Slade to take him out.

He's a big man. And Oliver certainly treated him with a lot of wariness so Diggle knows there's no way this guy will be a pushover, but he's erratic; swearing they'll never get a chance to see Felicity, then caving due to the promise of money - and not even making Oliver start the bank transfer before he went. This whole thing smells worse the longer it goes on, and Diggle just hopes Oliver has the sense to stop and throw-up that damn pill while it's still in his stomach. Far better to have it in a pocket than inside him.

There's obviously history between Slade and Oliver. They said as much. And that it ended badly has also been made clear, but Diggle still can't quite fathom Slade. He's like some of the battle-drunk soldiers he knew in Afghanistan, too caught up in past trauma to be able to function anymore.

Oliver's undiagnosed PTSD is something that's worried him since he met the man, but this guy, this guy has more issues than a comic book store.

Slade looks down at the tracking device in his hand, a model that looks not unlike ones Diggle remembers from the field. It's larger than the types of cellphones or tablets Felicity sends them out with and looks hard-wearing, covered with the sort of hard plastic designed to protect it from the rigours of warfare.

Slade's eyes return to it every few seconds but he's too far away for Diggle to take advantage of the distraction.

Abruptly, he stops his pacing and cackles.

"Not a bad pace," he crows, "did you know when I met him he could barely run a mile over rough terrain. Said he could do five miles on the treadmill - on the treadmill! - as if running in some namby-pamby gym was preparation for the real world."

"You don't say."

"Such a soft boy," Slade sneers, "I made him who he is."

Diggle narrows his eyes, watching the other man carefully. Slade seems almost proud of Oliver. Wants to see him succeed almost as much as he wants to see him suffer. Maybe that's something he can use.

"Five miles," Slade comments, "let's wait 'til he gets to five point one, just in case."

Diggle doesn't say anything, but Slade is staring full time at the tablet now. If it wasn't for the fact he still doesn't know where Felicity is, this would be the perfect time to take him down.

He bides his time. If life has taught him anything it's that there's always a right moment for things. And that moment is not yet here.

Diggle leans his head back against the bar and closes his eyes. He just really hopes he's up for the moment when it comes; the explosion back at the warehouse took a lot of out of him, and while he's been playing it up since he and Oliver were taken by Slade, he can't pretend there aren't actual injuries that will need to be dealt with. Soon.

He feels air moving over his face and opens his eyes.

Then jerks back, hitting his already sore head on the bar - hard - because Slade is right there, the man's screwed-up face mere inches from his own.

"Ha!" Slade laughs, "weak!"

Diggle sets his jaw and does not lash out. Better to be underestimated.

Get the drop on him when he's not looking.

Have the advantage of surprise.

Even if hitting him right now is very tempting.

"On your feet there," Slade says, having stepped back out of reach and pulled up his gun to point it at Diggle. "Let's go pay blondie a visit."

Diggle remembers Slade's comment about having lost a lot of the vision in one of his eyes and wonders about the man's depth perception. How would that affect his aim? Is it a permanent crippling or something that can be compensated for? But he gets to his feet, slowly, making a show of breathing hard and holding his head.

Slade sneers and Diggle looks forward to the moment in the future when he will make Slade eat that sneer. He's sure it will be worth waiting for.

"Walk ahead of me," Slade says, gesturing with his gun.

"Where am I going man?" Diggle asks.

Slade smirks, again.

"Downstairs."

That gives Diggle pause. Downstairs? The basement? How?

Slade laughs.

"The look on your face," he says, "I hope I get a chance to see it on his. Yes, I know about your little bat-cave. It's full of rooms you know, locked doors and little cells. You're not even using half the space. Very inefficient."

Well, Diggle admits to himself, that's certainly not something he would have thought of, and if Oliver fails it's the kind of ironic revenge that any psycho would get off on; Felicity dying from thirst mere feet from where they would run their search for her from.

It's kind of genius in a way.

A creepy, disturbing way.

Diggle heads towards the stairs, considering when to make his move. The basement is a big place, lots of nooks and crannies just as Slade claimed, and to be honest, he's still not sure he trusts this piece of information not to be a double bluff. Best to find her where she is, then take Slade out.

He punches the code in the door, noticing that Slade doesn't even bother to watch. Already knows the code then. He remembers Felicity telling Oliver once a door code should be at least eight digits long or it was too easy to hack. That's another one of the security upgrades they will be putting in place around here once all this is over.

He pulls back the door and walks down the stairs, holding onto the rail and moving gingerly, taking it one slow step at a time.

Slade makes a disgusted noise behind him, and Diggle thinks, yes, keeping thinking that man, and when I snap your neck it will be all the sweeter.

He stops at a refrigerator at the bottom of the stairs, pulls out two large bottles of water and shows them to Slade.

"One," Slade insists, and Diggle complies, replacing one on the shelf. If this all goes well she won't need it anyway.

He hopes this goes well.

Slade directs him past the weights and weapons, past Felicity's desk and screens, into the back area of the space where Oliver keeps the excess stock for the club and a lot of the old foundry gear that it would have been too difficult to remove from the space entirely.

There are doors along here that Diggle has never opened - was only even vaguely aware they were there.

"Which one?"

Slade points to the second of five heavy metal doors that look like something designed to hold back a flood aboard ship. Why they would be needed in the former foundry he has no idea.

Diggle limps to the door, turns the wheel lock with visible effort, and waits to be shot in the back by Slade because that seems like the kind of bastard thing the man would do.

He looks over his shoulder and Slade nods at him to open the door. No shooting today then.

Diggle shifts his weight, and moves the heavy door inwards, slowly.

A bare brick room, illuminated by a single bulb awaits him.

It looks empty.

Then a heavy metal pipe comes down on his shoulder and he crumples to the floor with a yell.


	18. Fighting chances

She puts her weight into the swing, twisting her entire body exactly as John taught her. The metal of the pipe is cold in her damp hands. She's scared of dropping it, missing this opportunity.

So scared that she doesn't really get a good look at the man she's aiming for until the pipe connects.

Then she screams.

"John!" Felicity drops to her knees beside her groaning friend. Her guilt is incredible, only outweighed by her worry. "John, I'm so sorry!"

Laughter interrupts her thoughts. A more dramatic person might even call it maniacal laughter.

Felicity looks up to see the Driver guffawing as if he has never seen anything so funny in his life.

"You," she glares.

He throws back his head, too amused, and she sees her chance.

In an instant she's snatches up the pipe, and dashes the few short steps, twisting her body as she goes so she can slam the pipe into his knee as hard as she can.

He goes to one knee with a grunt, his arm coming around to punch her in the stomach.

She curls around the painful blow, losing her air, and a second hit, this one closer to a slap, sends her reeling to the side.

She catches herself on a set of metal shelves, fully expecting to be shot or hit again, but no blow is forthcoming.

Instead she hears the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, and the soft grunts of reaction.

Felicity staggers around and sees John Diggle grappling with the Driver.

John catches one of the Driver's wrists in his hand, and steps inside the other man's reach to strip the gun out of his grip.

The weapon clatters to the ground, and without looking, John kicks it away.

The Driver brings his elbow up into John's throat and he staggers back. Then her captor reaches behind his back and pulls out something that even Felicity's blurred vision can tell is a sword.

"Felicity," John says in a pained but incredibly calm voice. "Run."

"No," she gasps instinctively.

"Oliver needs you," he says, not taking his eyes off of the sword. "Run."

Felicity looks around for something that could help her, could help him and suddenly realises where she is.

The club basement.

She feels anger swell up, bringing with it the realisation that she could have died in that room, locked inside somewhere she had previously considered incredibly safe.

And she knows what to do.

She picks up the pipe and throws it, yelling "John!"

He's not looking at her, his attention is entirely on the man in front of him, but John's hand comes up to snatch the metal tubing out of the air as if this is something they've practiced a thousand times.

Felicity has a moment of smugness that her idea worked so well, then the fight begins in earnest.

The Driver attacks, obviously well accustomed to his sword, confident in his abilities.

John defends himself with a rusty pipe, deflecting blows, but even Felicity's barely trained eye can see that his movements lack the smooth grace of the Driver's. He's not had the same level of training with a blade. He hasn't has the practice.

He's going to lose.

Felicity circles them, keeping her distance as she makes her way in the direction that John kicked the gun.

There are other weapons in here, but she thinks the gun is her best chance.

She turns her back on the fight, hoping and praying John can hold the Driver off.

Her mind throws questions and doubts at her as she scrambles around on the floor, searching the shadows for the discarded gun. Where is Oliver? How did Diggle find her? Is Oliver not here because he's hurt? Or dead?

She pushes that thought aside just as her fingers hit cold metal.

The gun.

Felicity grabs for it, pulling the weapon closer. It's a hand gun but it's larger than any she's seen before. John had shown her the basics - trigger, safety, clip release - of his own preferred sidearm but she can't really call herself an expert.

People use these every day, she reminds herself. Stupid people use these every day.

She lifts the weapon and turns, her finger on the trigger guard rather than the trigger as John taught her.

The Driver has John down on one knee, one hand holding him by the throat. John's hand holds the Driver's sword hand away from him, but the blade is moving ever closer. His other hand scratches at the Driver's grip on his throat, trying to prevent his own suffocation.

Felicity lifts the gun and moves forward. Her eyesight seems somehow improved (can adrenalin do that ?) but if she's going to shoot she wants to be absolutely sure what (and who) she's aiming at.

"Stop" she says, but it comes out too quiet for either man to hear. "Stop!" She says again, louder.

The Driver casts a glance in her direction.

"Look who's back," he says, then brings up his leg to hit John in the chest.

John staggers from the hit and the Driver uses grip on John's throat to smash the kneeling man's head into his knee.

John goes limp, his hands losing their grip. He sways, and the Driver steps around behind him, bringing his sword up under John's chin and pulling his body up as a human shield between himself and Felicity.

"How's your aim Blondie?"

"Not great," Felicity admits. "But it's not like this is a bow and arrow. Point and shoot, right?"

She thinks the Driver scowls at that, but without her glasses she can't really tell.

"Some of us," he sneers, "like weapons that didn't come off the arc."

"Says the man with the sword," she replies. Part of her mind comments that she's handling the witty banter part of the heroics pretty well. She's almost impressed with herself. "Let him go."

"No."

"Please let him go."

"Saying 'please' really isn't going to make a difference here girly."

"I'll shoot you."

"I'll cut his throat."

Felicity bites her lip.

"What do you want?"

"Oh it's just the day for what I want isn't it?" He says, which makes no sense at all to Felicity. She takes another step towards him and tries to see where she might be able to shoot him that won't hit John.

She can't see anywhere.

"Felicity," John says, his voice thick, eyes half closed, "shoot him."

"I'll hit you."

"Shoot him," John insists, "it'll be fine."

"Not for you mate," the Driver says, and Felicity suddenly realises he's talking in a completely differnet accent than before.

"You're Australian?" She asks, dumbfounded.

"Not the time, Felicity, John mutters. "Just shoot him!"

"John," she says, her heart in her throat. "I don't know if I can."

"You have to," he says simply, "there's no other way out of it."

"If you're going to shoot him," the Driver sneers, "get on and do it already, would ya luv?"

"Take a breath and pull the trigger," John says. His eyes are mostly clear now and even with her impaired vision she can see he's smiling at her.

"It's okay," he says. "Shoot."

She still hesitates. She knows she'll hit him. There's no way she won't.

But if she doesn't do it, the Driver will kill both of them. And John is telling her to shoot.

Felicity takes a breath.

She knows what she has to do.

"It's okay," John repeats.

"Put the gun down sweetheart," the Driver says.

Felicity sets her jaw and moves her forefinger from the trigger guard to the trigger.

"I'm sorry," she says.

She pulls the trigger.

And nothing happens.


	19. Shooting targets

Diggle closes his eyes and waits for the shot. He's been shot before. He knows what it feels like.

And at this point, after the day they've all had, this feels like the right thing to do. It might even save Felicity, and right now, that's enough.

But the shot doesn't come.

At least, not from Felicity.

Instead Slade slams forward into him. The sword falls away from his neck and Diggle twists and ducks, letting the Australian fall forward over his shoulder.

Felicity shrieks somewhere nearby and then there are hands, pulling him up and away. The hands have to be hers; Oliver would just lift, while these grab and drag at him.

Sure enough when he opens his eyes, it's her worried face looking back at him.

Diggle gets his legs under him as two of them stumble away from Slade. He checks over his shoulder. The man is down, groaning, an arrow in his shoulder, but it wasn't a killing blow. He will get up.

"Come on," he says, "we have to get out of here."

"Are you okay?" She says as she slips an arm around his waist, helping him.

"I will be."

So far today he's been knocked out, blown up, almost shot, almost stabbed and hit in the head at least twice. He's not feeling his best, but he knows the value of being alive, and any day you're breathing at the end of is a good day.

No matter how bloody and bruised you are.

"What happened?"

"Arrows," she gasps, "so I'm thinking Oliver."

He hears a noise in his ear. Two distinct clicks.

"Yup," he agrees, "it's Oliver."

She looks at him askance, and he gestures towards his ear. "Slade never noticed the ear pieces."

"That's lucky."

"I get the impression," he says, "that he's not the most observant of men. Otherwise he'd notice he's missing most of his marbles."

Felicity laughs softly as he directs her towards one of the weapons cabinets.

"What?" She asks.

"I'm not going anywhere unarmed," he says, "and neither are you."

"I'm not good with guns," she says, "you saw that, right?"

"I saw you not shoot me." He types the code into the door lock.

"You saw me fail to shoot anyone," she says, looking around. "Where is he?"

"Around," Diggle says, selecting a hand gun and slamming a full magazine home. He lifts a second gun, offers it to her but she shakes her head.

"Failed to shoot, remember?"

"Felicity," he says, deathly serious, "take the gun."

She flinches, but she accepts it.

"I can't see," she says, but she has the gun in her hand so he feels at least a little better.

"Queen!" Slade yells from somewhere behind them and Felicity winces.

"Do we help?" She whispers, "or do we run?"

"We trust Oliver to handle it," Diggle says, "I know he wants you safe, so we make you safe."

Felicity nods.

Diggle holds out a hand and she takes it. He nods once, aiming for reassurance and possibly falling short.

"Where are you, Queen?" Yells Slade from somewhere in the shadows.

Diggle crouches, pulling her down with him. She's keeps a tight hold of his hand, but she's not panicking. He marvels for a second how far they've all come as a team in these few months. Then he realises that this is really not the time to have this realisation and wonders if his head injury is affecting him more than he thought.

There's another click in his ear.

"He's close," Diggle tells Felicity.

"Then why hasn't he shot him yet?" Felicity complains under her breath.

"They have a past," Diggle shrugs. He checks their surroundings - they're covered on two sides, the wall and the cabinet. But another word for covered is cornered.

They need to get out of the basement, but there's no exit that isn't exposed, and Slade must recovered his weapons by now.

He's considering whether the run across the main part of the floor would be worth risking in order to be that much closer to the door, when he hears Oliver's voice over the radio.

It's not a great plan that he's proposing, but it is a plan, and any kind of coordinated effort is worth trying.

He hopes.

* * *

Felicity shivers. The gun is cold in her hand but she doesn't let go. She checks it over and over, looking to see that the safety is turned off.

She could swear that the safety had also been off the previous gun she held, but apparently she'd been wrong.

Maybe her eyesight had let her down.

Slade yells for Oliver. He sounds far enough away, that she takes the chance of pulling on John's arm.

He glances at her quizzically.

"The safety," she asks, lifting up the gun she's holding so he can see, "it's off, right?"

John looks down then nods.

"I don't understand," she murmurs to herself.

John raises an eyebrow at her and she shakes her head. "Doesn't matter. Later."

If there is a later.

Felicity is tired. She's had a hell of a day. She's dirty, aching, and half-blind. She's full of the most nervous kind of adrenalin and it's got her shaking.

She's doubting herself. Which she hates.

The other gun was ready to fire. And it didn't. The safety was off, the magazine was in place, there was a round in the chamber, ready to go.

She pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

Diggle twitches. She watches as he raises one hand to his almost invisible ear piece. He listens and nods, then meets Felicity's eyes.

"Oliver needs us to distract Slade."

"Slade," she repeats. Now the Driver has a name. For some reason that makes her feel more confident - as if knowing his name will give her power over him.

Well it's true in magic.

And, she realises, if they get out if this, it could be true for her as well. The Internet is her domain, and she can do a lot of damage with a name. A lot of damage.

She smiles to herself, grimly.

"What does he need us to do?"

* * *

Oliver hangs from the ceiling.

So far things have gone as he hoped; Slade took the bait of the less injured than he appeared Diggle, he never noticed the radios in their ears, he himself was able to run the distance required, hear Slade walk Diggle to the basement and double back.

And now he's in the rafters with his bow and arrows and all he needs is for Slade to poke his head up long enough, and he'll take him down.

Slade was his teacher and his trainer and his friend. Almost all the hand to hand combat he knows comes from Slade. And yes, he learned more from others after he thought the man was dead, but Slade planted the seeds in him. Slade knows how he moves and reacts and thinks in a fight, because that's what Slade gave him. That's what Slade made him.

And as a result, Oliver was never able to beat him.

With his hands, at least.

With his bow, from a distance, things are different.

Slade had been a sniper once, but he wasn't that now. Whatever else the damage from the rocket Oliver had failed to stop had done, it seemed to have taken that from him. It could be about diminished eyesight, but Oliver knows that Deadshot is entirely blind in one eye and that doesn't seem to have slowed him down at all.

Maybe Slade has just lost his temperament for it. You need calm to shoot from a distance. Peace.

Either way, it's a sword that Slade is carrying now.

From his vantage point, Oliver can see the gun Felicity discarded - Slade's gun - lying abandoned on the floor.

Slade either hasn't seen it or doesn't want it. Instead he moves around the floor sword in hand, flitting from shadow to shadow, keeping his head down.

Oliver reaches up, grabs another hand hold, and, trying to silence the grunt of effort it takes, swings himself round for a better view.

He can't see Slade right now, but he knows roughly where he is, and if he can get the angle, and Diggle can keep Slade's attention, they can do this.

Oliver settles into a crouch on an exposed beam and readies an arrow.

Below him and to the right a flash of blonde hair catches his eye. Felicity.

He can't see Diggle.

He can't see Slade.

But her hair stands out like a beacon.

He wants to warn her, hide her, protect her.

He wants to touch her, claim her, take her.

He wants -

Oliver presses his eyes closed for the briefest of seconds, then returns his attention to the rest of the room.

But he keeps a bit of his awareness focussed on Felicity. She's the weakest of them. She needs his protection. It's only sensible that he doesn't lose track of her.

His peripheral vision alerts him to movement on the left, and there Diggle is, making his silent way across the room.

Diggle checks his surroundings, then heads for the main computer/desk area. It's the only space the room that's completely exposed - it's the only place he can guarantee a clean shot on Slade.

It's interesting to see how Diggle adapts his field craft. Before he was silent, now he's merely stealthy. There's more presence to him, more weight to his steps.

It's the perfect bait for a man like Slade, who is always convinced that everyone else will be found wanting in comparison to himself.

Diggle makes it to the desks, keeping low. Then he casts a cursory eye around him, lays his gun down on his desk, and starts typing on the computer.

Oliver can see the tension in Diggle's shoulders for here, and so immediately clicks the radio twice to reassure his friend that he has him covered.

A minute passes.

Two.

"I thought blondie was your tech support," Slade says somewhere from the shadows on the right.

Diggle snatches up the gun, watching the darkness.

Oliver scans from above.

He sees nothing.

He looks again. The darkness is absolute. He can't even see Felicity's hair anymore.

Felicity.

"Or could this be a cunning plan?" Says Slade. "Designed to lure me out."

Damn the man.

This is the problem with fighting old friends - they know how you think, and it's worse with Slade because Slade in so many ways taught him to to think.

He sees Felicity's hair flash in the darkness and then there she is, standing in front of Slade, his arm holding her head up close to his, a knife at her throat.

Oliver hears Diggle swear softly over the radio. He's spotted her too.

"Didn't we already do this Slade?" Diggle asks, "Do you really want to keep playing this revolving door of hostage taking?"

"I want what I want," Slade sneers.

"And just what is that man? Because I've heard you ask for a dozen damn things today and you never really seemed to want any of them."

Diggle has all of Slade's attention, so Oliver takes a moment to change location, getting a better angle.

"My primary goal never changed," Slade says.

Oliver is closer now, he can see Felicity's expression clearly. Instead of the fear or panic he might have expected she just looks mightily pissed off.

"Just shoot him," she says through gritted teeth.

"Felicity-"

"We already had this conversation John," she says angrily. "We agreed I would shoot. Now it's your turn. At least you're a good enough shot to not hit me."

"Ah," Slade says, pressing his face against her ear in a grotesque approximation of intimacy, "but what you didn't know is that bullets are rarely instantly fatal. Even if he shoots me in the head, I might flinch enough to slit your pretty little throat. And then it's all for naught."

"Shoot him," Felicity insists. "This has without a doubt been the worst day of my life and I swear to God if you don't shoot him I'm just going to, well I don't know but there will be tears and anger and it will probably result in my death, after which I will fricking come back and haunt you if you don't SHOOT HIM RIGHT NOW!"

Slade laughs as Felicity yells, and right then, any last little moment of nostalgia or friendship or anything he ever felt for the man goes out of the window.

And he looses the arrow.

And it finds its mark.

Slade's laughter cuts off abruptly.

Slade sways, his body apparently not realising that it's already dead.

He doesn't have time to flinch or cut or anything he promised.

He just drops.

Backwards, away from Felicity. She makes an odd noise as his arms fall away from her - a noise halfway between a meep and a sigh.

Slade lies dead on the floor, an arrow through his neck. The shaft severed his spine in such a way as to kill him instantly.

Oliver closes his eyes, thinking of the good Slade. The man he knew. The man who gave him the skills to survive. The man who saved his life countless times.

But he doesn't regret firing the shaft.

There's no anger, no guilt.

Only peace.


	20. Recovery moments

Felicity feels the knife fall away from her neck, feels Slade's grip on her loosen, feels the man himself crumple to the floor.

She stays standing, caught between her angry outburst and the slowly dawning horror that a person just died right there.

It wasn't so much that she wanted him to live, but this is the first death she's seen up close and personal. Not on a video feed. Any death is bad.

But it's worse with your own eyes, even when your own eyes are as low definition as hers.

She senses more than sees John slump, lowering the gun he had trained on her and Slade.

She looks up into the rafters, searching for Oliver, but yet again her vision fails her. Everything is darkness and shadow, she can't make him out.

"Thank God," John says. "Felicity, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she says automatically, then looks down at herself. She's filthy, her clothes covered in dust and dirt, sweat and blood. "But I need a shower."

She looks from herself to the body at her feet.

"Do you wish I hadn't done it?" Says a voice, close beside her. She looks up to see an Oliver-shaped blur on the other side of the corpse.

"No," she says honestly. "Do you?"

"No," he sighs. "I wish I did. We were friends once. I thought he was dead and I mourned him. Then I had to kill him. Again."

"He would have killed you," John says from the desk. He sounds utterly exhausted and the shape of him suggests that he's holding on to the table for support. "He would have killed all of us."

"I had to kill him," Oliver says in a flat voice. "I don't regret it." He looks up from Slade to Felicity. "I would have done anything to keep you safe."

Felicity feels her stomach clench, and before she can stop herself she says:

"I thought you were dead. And I can see that you're not, but it, it wasn't good."

Oliver steps in close to her, holding something out and cutting off her thought.

"What?" She says, genuinely confused.

He pauses, then raises his hands to her face.

She blinks as he gently places the spare pair of glasses she keeps in her desk drawer on her face.

The world comes into focus instantly.

And there Oliver is, so close. His fingers are still on the frames of her glasses and she can suddenly, for the first time in hours, see expressions accurately. He looks worried, pained, and she's certainly sure that despite what he says, he's not okay. He's not okay at all.

It must show in her face, because suddenly he's dropping his hands and stepping back.

"Oliver," she says, reaching towards him, but he's already gone.

She blinks and looks to John. Now that she can see again she can see the cuts on his face, the bruises on his skin. He looks like a wreck.

Oliver still has the hood up. His shoulders are tense and he has his back to her.

Slade's body bleeds out on the floor.

She's dirty and tired and spent.

John's injured.

Oliver's closed off.

Felicity looks down at her hands and makes a decision.

"So my day sucked," she says, "how was yours?"

John stares at her for a long moment. Then he snorts all the air out of his nose and starts to laugh. Felicity smiles, and find herself laughing as much out of stress relief as merriment. Oliver turns and looks at them both, and a thin smile breaks through his emotional armour.

After a few moments John sinks into a chair and Felicity goes to find the medicine cabinet. After a few moments more Oliver pushes down the hood and comes to hover nearby, watching as she lines up medical supplies on the tabletop.

She glances up at him through her eyelashes and suddenly remembers the last time she did this, when she dressed his wounds in the early hours after Tommy's death.

Perhaps the same thought occurs to him, because he meets her eyes, them steps away, saying something she doesn't quite catch.

"What?" She asks.

"I'll take care of the body," he says, standing over Slade with his back to her and John.

She feels like he's waiting for her to say something but for the life of her she has no idea what that is.

John groans as she presses an antiseptic wipe to a cut on his forehead and when she looks back to Oliver, he's already gone with the body.

"Go easy on him," John says. "He really thought you were dead."

"You thought I was dead?"

"They blew the warehouse," John says, "he thought it was the bomb you were attached to. He thought he lost you."

"Oh," she says. "I remember bits of the explosion. I thought they set it off to kill you - both of you."

"He thought the same."

"And you?"

"I was out cold," he says, "woke up after. He was in shock. I'm amazed he held it together long enough to get us back here. Then..."

"Then?" She prompts when it becomes obvious he's not going to finish the thought.

"Then Slade appeared," John says, "threatened to leave you locked in a room to die of thirst unless Oliver gave him some crazy list of things."

Felicity shudders. Death by dehydration. Nasty. She's happy she spent her time locked up without that knowledge. She'd never have been able to cope.

"He was going to do it, you know," John says, "everything on that list. He offered him millions of dollars to be allowed to give you a bottle of water."

There's an emotional pain in her chest, but she can't let herself feel it or she'll start crying and never stop.

"Felicity?"

"I'm fine," she says, trying hard not to sniffle. "I'm fine."

"It's been a rough day," John says.

"What do you tell Carly," she says, interrupting before can finish the thought, "about days like today?"

John blinks.

"There haven't been many days like today," he says, "but I don't always have to tell her. Sometimes just holding her hand is enough."

Felicity nods.

She presses the sticky butterfly stitches over the cut in John's forehead. It looks nasty but it probably won't scar.

What does it say about her life that she knows that now?

"You'll probably have a black eye tomorrow," she says.

"Wouldn't be the first time."

She blinks and suddenly her eyes are full of tears.

"Hey now," John says, squeezing her shoulder. "It's okay, you're safe."

"Only the Driver - Slade - is dead." Felicity points out. "There's more of them that aren't dead. How is that safe?"

"Felicity-" He starts, but the flood gates have opened now and she's drowning in words.

"They said they were going to wait until he got there," Felicity babbles, "until he saw me and then they were going to blow me up. To hurt Oliver. They said it was all about hurting Oliver. I didn't matter except as a way to hurt him."

"You do matter," John says, but she can barely hear him above the sound of her own breakdown.

"And that guy Downton Hogwarts-"

"Downton who?"

"-he said it was all about pain, and revenge, and he said I comfort Oliver and he didn't deserve it after what he did-"

"What did I do?"

Oliver steps into her field of vision and she freezes.

"Felicity," Oliver says, "what did he say I did?"

"He didn't," she admits, "he just said.."

"What?" Oliver says, stepping in closer. He's not wearing the hood anymore, and he's evidently been wearing his Hood make up long enough for half of it to have rubbed or sweated off. He's shirtless, the red shine of new cuts gleaming against the grime on his skin.

"You're injured," she says, reaching for any excuse to change the subject.

"I'm fine," he says, "what did he say?"

Felicity bites her lip.

"He might just have been being dramatic," she says, "but he said you had failed the city."

Oliver purses his lips, obviously unhappy.

"I know it's your line," she says, "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing," he says, "to apologise for."

"Oliver," she starts, but finds she doesn't know what to say. She feels her eyes welling up again.

And then Oliver is there, his hand cupping her cheek, his face concerned.

"It's not your fault," he says. "If anyone's, it's mine." She can't help it. She brings her hand up to cover his. She waits for him to move away, pull back, but he doesn't.

She looks at him, so close, but as closed off as ever.

"So what did you do?"

"Felicity," he says earnestly, "I honestly have no idea."

She looks into his eyes and she's sure he's telling her the truth.

Or is that just the effect of his hand on her face?

John shifts beside her, and she suddenly realises how awkward this is, standing here with Oliver touching her, right in front of John.

She steps back, dropping her hand from his, letting his hand fall away from her.

"Felicity," he says, but he's not touching her anymore so his hand just hangs in mid air. After a second he drops it down.

"Yeah," John says, half under his breath, "this isn't something you two should talk about at all."

Felicity blushes crimson. She busies herself with the medical supplies.

"Digg," Oliver says, exasperated.

"Just saying."

"Is that the worst of it?" Felicity interrupts, gesturing to the cuts on Oliver's shoulder.

"Pretty much," he says, looking down at himself. "There'll be bruises."

"There's always bruises," she agrees.

"But I'm okay," he says.

In her peripheral vision she thinks she sees John shake his head, but when she turns to look at him he's still.

"What time is it?" She says instead.

"I have no idea," Oliver admits, "it feels late."

"Yeah," she agrees.

John mutters something, and she turns to him to ask what it was he just said but he waves it off.

"I need to open the club," Oliver says, "Felicity, if you're sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," she says, "I just need to shower."

"I'll get you a towel," he says, before she can object that she meant to shower at home.

"Oliver," John says, but Felicity can't make out the meaning in the tone.

"I just want to go home," she says.

"No," he replies firmly, "these people are still out there. I don't want you alone. Stay here for now."

Felicity blinks.

"Please," he adds, "I don't want to be worrying about you."

She would object, but her nerves still feel raw. She doesn't want to be alone and he's offering her a way to avoid that.

"Okay," she says, "I guess I'll take that towel then."


	21. Taking care

Oliver showers first. It's late and he can already hear the footsteps of his legitimate (and ignorant) employees arriving at the club. He keeps several spare sets of clothes in the basement for quick change purposes and it's not long before he's back in his usual managerial suit, all external traces of the Hood gone from sight. The bruises under the clothes are a different matter, but he's used to hiding his physical aches and pains by now.

He leaves a towel out for Felicity, but when he comes back down to check on her she's working at her desk, still in her dusty outfit.

She hasn't even taken the time to wipe the dried blood off of her forehead, though he supposes it's possible she doesn't know it's there.

"Felicity," he says and she jumps and looks up at him a little guiltily. "What happened to getting clean?"

"I wanted to get it all down, everything I can remember," she says, "before I start repressing today."

"Repressing?"

"And drinking," she adds. "Mustn't forget the drinking."

"Repressing and drinking," he comments, "doesn't sound healthy."

She fixes him with a look over the top of her glasses.

"Are you really going to tell me what's healthy and what's not?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Good," she says, "because we both know your version of healthy - shooting people full of arrows and occasionally jumping off buildings - is not what you might term medically advisable."

"It works for me," he says.

She shakes her head, but she's smiling. And suddenly he remembers earlier in the day, before everything, when Diggle took him to task for not acknowledging the reality of his feelings for her.

"You need to get clean," he says, purposely shoving his hands into his jacket pockets so he won't be tempted to touch her.

"I will," she says, "as soon as..."

"As soon as what?" He prompts.

"As soon as this is done."

"And what's this?"

"What I can remember," she says, "there were four of them, two guys in masks, then Slade, the driver, then the British guy."

"I spoke to a Brit," Oliver says, "he asked for fifty million dollars."

"I know," she seems to shiver a little and he has to hold on the inside of his pockets to stop him reaching out to comfort her. "I told them that was too high. You'd never pay."

"I would have paid it," he says instantly.

"How?" Her forehead creases, "you don't have access to that sort of cash. Do you?"

"I don't know," he says, "and I didn't need to because you sounded the alarm and Diggle tracked the van on traffic cameras, and I knew I could find you, but if all I could have done was paid, I would have paid."

She stares at him, dumbfounded.

"They knew it was too high," she says, "it was just a ploy to get you there. To kill you."

"I know," he says, and he can't stop himself taking a step closer to her, though he keeps his hands secure in his pockets. "I still would have paid it. There's no amount of money that would be too much."

She's looking up at him, a little shocked, a little speechless, the grime of her ordeal still smeared on her skin.

She blinks suddenly and looks away.

"That's nice to know," she says, "but let's not say it too loudly. Still a lot of bad guys out there."

She looks back to her monitors.

"I've checked the footage," she says, "the car was reported stolen this morning. There's no clear shots of anyone other than Slade from the car - the other two wore masks, and there's no footage of Downton Hogwarts at all."

Oliver blinks.

"Downton... Hogwarts?"

"Oh," she says, flushing pink under the dirt on her face, "that was what I called him. In my head."

"Oh," he replies.

"I do that," she says, "when I don't know people's names. Like this guy at the office is Creepy McStaresville. I mean, I know now that his name is Michealson, but for a while he was just this creepy guy who always called me to fix things that go wrong under his desk. I mean, he still does that but now he has a name, and I'm babbling again."

"You are," he agrees.

"So I called him Downton Hogwarts because he was British. And not just like Walter-British but very British. Like masterpiece-theatre-British. And so Downton Abbey and Hogwarts from Harry Potter came into my head and, well it stuck."

"It makes it funny," he says, perceptively, "it makes it less scary."

"That's the theory," she says, "I'm not sure it works."

"Anything that keeps you sane works," he says, purposely keeping his voice light and trying very hard not to think about the island.

"Anyway," she says, " I was trying to find out who he might be, but I don't really have anything to go on."

"He's connected to me," Oliver says. "Somehow."

"You don't know?"

"No clue. I didn't recognise his voice."

"He certainly knew there was more to you than the playboy cover," she says. "His men might not of, but he and Slade, they knew."

"The list of people," he says, "who know that is very short."

"How about the list of people who suspect," she says, "or the list of people who can put it together?"

He doesn't say anything.

"How many people were there on that island with you Oliver?"

"By the end," he says, "there was only me."

"And before that?"

"Quite a few," he admits, "but I thought they were all dead."

"Like Slade?"

"Yes."

"So some of them could have escaped."

"It's possible. Not likely, but possible."

She reaches up to pat him on the hand and he realises that not only have his hands come out of his pockets but that he's holding onto the back of her chair so tightly that his knuckles are white.

Her hand pats his, then squeezes his fingers. He can't help but close his eyes while he enjoys her touch.

He never thought he'd get to touch her again. Thought that chance was past, lost. Destroyed in the explosion that left the warehouse so much rubble and body parts.

Body parts.

"Can you hack SCPD?" He says, pulling his hand out from under hers abruptly.

"Sure," she says. She's looking at him strangely, but he doesn't have time for that. He thought the blood and flesh torn up by the bomb were hers. But she's fine.

"There was a body," he explains, "or parts of one. In the warehouse, after the bomb exploded. I thought it was yours."

She gasps, and he's about to apologise when she gets it.

"So who was it?" She says half to herself as she turns back to the computer.

Her fingers fly over the keyboard, her eyes flick between screens.

"This might take a while," she says, "they upgraded their security after the earthquake."

"How long?"

"A few hours."

"Okay," he says, then puts his hands on the top of her wheeled chair and pulls it back from the desk.

"Hey!"

"If it'll take a while," he says, "you might as well be clean when you do it."

She doesn't get up so he pushes the chair in the direction of the very basic bathroom facilities the basement has. The chair rolls about a foot, stopping when she drops her feet down to brake.

She twists the seat round to glare up at him.

"Felicity," he says, "it's five minutes. You can take five minutes. The information will still be there."

"You don't know that."

"I'll take the chance. Go. Shower."

"I'd rather shower in my own home."

"Yeah well," he says. "Until I know it's safe I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"What even while I shower?" She says, then does that thing where she mentally replays her last line and winces.

"Get clean," he says. "The data will wait for you, and so will I."

She narrows her eyes.

"I'm not," he says, stepping in between her chair and the desk, "letting you back in here until you're clean."

She glares at him.

"I'll have you know," she says, "I do some of my best work dirty."

Pause, mental replay, wince.

"Oliver." Her hands come up to hide her face. "I don't mean to keep saying things like that."

"Get in the shower Felicity," he says, "the Internet will be here when you get back."

She scowls, then snatches up the towel and walks away, muttering under her breath. He can't hear her but he's sure none of it is complimentary.

He tries not to let on that he thinks she looks adorable.

Because she is adorable. She's amazing. She has a singular place in his life.

But people have noticed that. The wrong people. Today proves it. And as much as he might like to follow Diggle's advice and pull her even further into his life, that will just make her value to him so much more apparent to any prying eyes.

She's gone through enough today because of him.

But when he hears the tell-tale sound of running water, and he knows she's stepped into the shower cubicle he was in earlier, it's very difficult not to let his mind imagine it.


	22. Cleansing rituals

She wants a drink.

She wants Oliver to have stocked this shower with shampoo and conditioner instead of just soap.

She wants Oliver to stop being all hover-y and concerned and adorable around her.

It's not helping her crush.

The water, at least, is warm. Comforting.

Oliver was right about that much - she needed this shower. She needed to wash the day off. Wash off the dirt and the memories and the trauma. But now, with clean skin under hot water, she feels exposed. Like a raw nerve.

She can't stop thinking about him.

He thought she died. He was willing to pay fifty million dollars to get her back. He is looking at her differently.

The basic fact of their relationship is that she has a crush on him which he ignores. That her feelings might go deeper than that is something she ignores in turn, because Oliver Queen already has women in his bed. He doesn't need her there. He needs her by his side, running comms and hacking databases. Giving him the support he needs to do what he must.

He ignores the fact that she has a crush because she's his friend. He wants her to be his friend. Friends ignore friends' stupid crushes because they are friends.

And that's it.

He holds onto her for comfort. For support.

It must have been horrible for him to think he might lose her - the one woman in his life (that he's not related to) that he doesn't want to sleep with.

Maybe that's an unfair characterisation but that's always been how he's treated her.

Platonically.

She turns off the water and steps out of the shower, wringing her hair out as she goes. Of course there's no hairbrush waiting to help her smooth out the curls. There's no anything really, just soap and a towel.

And the filthy set of clothes she wore today.

The idea of putting them back on turns her stomach, so she wraps the towel around herself (it's more than large enough to cover everything) and heads for her desk and the sports bag she brought in a few days ago for a training session that never happened.

Oliver's waiting for her.

"I'm not letting you sit down," he says, without turning around, "until you've had something to eat." He is sitting in her chair with his back to her. He doesn't look round. He must have heard her footsteps.

"You are not my mother, she retorts, then copies his move from earlier, using the wheeled chair to push him out of the way.

She crouches by the desk, keeping the towel secured under her upper arms, while she roots through the bag, hoping she packed underwear as well as gym gear.

Her wet hair is cold against her neck. There's more of a chill in the air in the main room of the basement than there was in the tiny bathroom.

She shivers as she searches.

There's her yoga pants and her sports bra. But where are the panties? She's sure she packed them...

All at once she's aware of a finger lightly tracing the line of her shoulder blade.

She pauses. He can't be...

"You're hurt," he says. She can't see his face but his voice is pained. Strained. "A bruise."

"I bruise easily," she replies lightly, trying to figure out what this is.

Is this just another of his touchstone moments - like her hand at the court room, or the way he cupped her cheek after his ex left her tied up on the floor of her office?

Is this him reassuring himself that she's okay? Or is he genuinely looking at wounds she can't see and she's just misinterpreting it?

Or could it be...?

His hand retreats and she feels even colder than she did before.

She gathers her clothes in her arms.

"I'll be right back," she says. "If you want me to eat, order something. I don't care what so long as it comes with wine."

She doesn't look at him as she hurries away.

She doesn't know what that was but she's sure - sure - it wasn't what it felt like.

And she knows if he sees her face right now he'll know that it's not just a silly crush on a friend.

And after everything that's happened today, she really doesn't want to have to face that truth. She's had more than enough trauma already.

Inside the bathroom the mirror is fogged up. It's not a large mirror (it's a very basic bathroom) but it's still a mirror. Once she's dressed she wipes off the glass and looks at her own reflection.

There's a scrape on her chin. She can feel a tender lump on her head. There's some bruising around her throat where Norris held her down in the car.

Her eyes are tired - her make up is long gone, first covered with dirt, then washed off in the shower and her skin looks pale. Her hair is still damp and it makes her look a bit like a trauma victim. She doesn't have a hair grip so she pulls it back and flips it over, creating a loose knot to keep it off her face.

She doesn't look like herself. She looks like a victim.

Maybe that's what that was about. He was worried.

She bites her lip, notices how it makes her look even more vulnerable and glares at her reaction instead.

No.

This will not do.

She pushes her glasses up her nose and squares her chin. She has gone through too much today to obsesses over tiny details.

Oliver is waiting for her when she walks back into the room. He's moved out of her chair, is leaning against the desk, arms folded. There's a flash of something, some complex emotion, on his face when she first appears, but he clamps down on it, and it's gone before she can tell what it was.

"Did you order?"

"Pizza," he says. He looks down at her in her workout gear and immediately takes his suit jacket off and offers it to her.

"Thanks," she says, sliding her arms down the sleeves. "How much of a crime against fashion do I look?"

He smiles.

"I'm pretty sure Thea would gasp," he says, "Armani doesn't go well with sweats."

"Still," she says, "thanks, I'm a bit cold."

He nods and moves out of her way, allowing her access to the computer.

She seats herself at the desk and takes a moment to pull his jacket tighter around her. She can still feel the lingering heat of his body in the silk lining. The material ghosts over her bare arms and for a second she thinks of his finger on her back.

No. It couldn't have been.

She takes the chance to look up at him, and he smiles. It's his tight, pained smile. The smile he offers for reassurance when he's not actually reassured.

His arms are tightly folded, his body language shut down and closed off. The shirt he's wearing emphasises the thickness of the muscles in his arms, the literal barrier between his body and the world.

She doesn't have any comfort to offer right now. She doesn't think he'd take it if she did.

So she does the only thing she can.

"Okay then," she says, pulling the keyboard closer to her, "let's hack the police."


	23. Drinking away

He watches her work. There's a glass of wine by the keyboard that she sips from absently every few minutes. He's been keeping it topped up but she doesn't seem to have noticed.

Felicity, when she's in her element, with her keyboards and screens and intense concentration, doesn't really seem to notice the world around her. It all goes away while she focuses.

Oliver wishes he could do that, but he can't. After his time on the island he notices everything. Slade taught him that awareness through months and years of ever present danger. It's saved his life more than once, but now he cannot turn it off.

In this instant he is aware of everything. And as there's not much happening in the basement right now, the everything that he is aware of is her.

Her hair is still damp. The moisture makes it more curly but less defined - instead of the sleek golden tresses she normally has, her drying hair has a frizz to it. Lots of tiny individual curls rather than the large lazy loops. He wants to run his fingers through it, tease out the strands, wrap it around his hands and kiss her so hard-

Oliver shifts against the pillar he leans against.

Where did that come from?

He knows he wants to protect Felicity. He knows that he likes Felicity. He'd even use the word 'love' in a strictly platonic sense. It's true that since Tommy's death he's felt compelled to touch her; hold her hand, rub her shoulders, guide her through a room of people with his hand at the small of her back, but he's never thought about -

That.

Except that's not true. He has thought about her like that. He's had moments where something she said triggered a mental image. He's felt himself react - and pushed those thoughts away oh so quickly.

She deserves more than him. She deserves better than him. Someone who can give her a life where she won't be kidnapped just for knowing them.

But now the thought is in his head. The thought of walking over there, pulling her out of that chair and kissing her. The thought of pressing her up against this pillar and stripping his jacket off her. Tasting her skin. Hearing her gasp his name.

"Oliver?"

Oliver's eyes fly open. Felicity cocks an eyebrow at him.

"Are you okay?" She asks.

"Fine," he says. He pushes himself off the pillar and crosses the room to her.

Felicity looks at him, then her wine glass, and then beyond it, to the empty bottle.

"Did I drink that all myself?"

"Mostly," he says.

"Did you have any?"

"No, he admits.

"So the answer isn't so much 'mostly'," she points out, "as 'yes'."

"Yes."

"Oliver," she says, shaking her head, "are you trying to get me drunk?"

"You said you wanted to drink."

"And you said you wanted me to hack into the secure server at SCPD."

"You can't do both?"

She grins.

"Well as it turns out I can." Her grin is wide, happy and trouble-free. You would never think she was kidnapped only hours before. "But if you're opening a second bottle, you will drink it with me."

"What did you find?" Oliver asks.

"Only if you promise to have a drink with me," she says, "we all could use one after today."

"Fine," he says, "now what did you find?"

"The site of the explosion is currently being investigated by CS teams. Body parts have been tagged and sent to the morgue for analysis. No data on who it might be yet, it's too early, they've only had the scene for two hours."

"Feels longer," he mutters.

"You're telling me," she agrees. "I'm not sure there's any more information we can find tonight. I'll leave a worm in the system to notify me when the incident report is completed."

He nods, but can't hide his frustration.

"Not everyone works at Oliver-speed," she says, "this isn't the only crime in town. It takes time."

"I know."

"Come on," she says, stretching her hands over her head. "Have a drink with me. Though," she adds, looking down at her attire, "I'm not really dressed for the club."

"We don't have to drink in the club."

"Where then?" She says, "because, no offence, but I'd kinda like to not be here for a while. It's cold."

"My place?" He offers.

"The Queen mansion?" Her eyebrows shoot up, "isn't that a bit..."

"A bit?"

"I don't know, a bit much? How will you explain to your sister why the IT girl is on your couch, wearing your jacket and drinking your wine?"

"You're my friend."

"Your friend who she's never met."

"My house is secure," he says, "I want you safe."

"I'm safe with you," she says, and he has to bite down on the thought that she's only unsafe because of him. "Look," Felicity continues, "why don't we go to my place? My clothes are there and the couch is pretty comfy, so you can keep the whole 'not letting me out of your sight' thing going. And I have wine."

"The club," he objects, gesturing vaguely.

"Is running perfectly well without you," she says. "I'll shut down the system while you make one last public appearance, then we go out the back way."

"The paparazzi," he says.

"Have already got pictures of you holding my hand at your mother's trial."

Oliver feels suddenly irrationally angry. It's the press' fault that anyone made the connection between them and now it might be the press' fault that he can't protect her as he wants to.

All at once he makes a decision.

"Take the tazer," he says, "and take a cab. I'll follow on the bike. I'll never be more than ten feet away from you."

"I thought John said you left the bike at the warehouse."

"I have another."

Felicity stares at him, then grins.

"Of course you do." She lets out an amused snort and shakes her head. "I still think you're over complicating things," she says.

"Indulge me."

"Fine, but if I'm following this plan, you're providing the drinks."

"I thought you said you had wine."

"I'm sure your wine's better."

He nods an acknowledgement.

"Shut down the system," he says, "I'll wait for you upstairs."

She shrugs out of his suit jacket and offers it back to him wordlessly. She turns back to the screen and he makes himself head for the stairs before he becomes mesmerised by the creamy skin of her mostly bare shoulders.

He makes the rounds at the club, pulling on his playboy persona as easily as he does the jacket. He laughs with the DJ, sends a bottle of champagne to a table of regulars, checks in with the bar staff. Tommy organised the place to run like a well-oiled machine, and even now, months after he left and weeks after he died, that order continues.

It might not be the best legacy, the most heroic, but Oliver knows Tommy would probably have liked it all the same.

It's easy, this fake conversation. He's not really saying anything, just "nice to see you"s and "how are you"s. It's light, breezy. Thin.

There's no weight to this part of his life. He feels like it could blow away on the wind.

Unlike the weight of the list, the heaviness of the basement and the solid presence of Felicity and Diggle.

He tells the bar manager to lock up without him and heads for his office to retrieve the spare helmet he keeps there. While there he takes two bottles of wine too good to serve behind the bar. He knows she likes this red, and if drinking helps her put today's trauma behind her he's happy to enable it.

He doesn't think about his own trauma. There isn't enough alcohol in the world to deal with that. All he can do is help her with hers.

He finds Felicity on the loading dock, still dressed in her workout gear but now with one of Diggle's hoodies wrapped around her. He feels odd seeing her dressed in someone else's clothes. Maybe he's just so used to seeing her in colour, that the dark blue of the jacket looks wrong. Yes that must be it.

A taxi pulls up and he walks down to it.

Oliver hands over a fifty and gestures to Felicity. The cabbie nods and she gets in the back seat without a word.

He rolls his bike out and waits until the car turns the corner. Then he starts the engine and follows.

Despite his promise its more like forty feet between them. He doesn't want to crowd the cab - instead he wants a full view of the road, watching for threats, turning his ever-present awareness outward.

And maybe Felicity was right about his paranoia, because nothing happens.

It's a short ride, but it's late at night and there are few cars on the road. And no photographers, for once.

The taxi arrives at her building and she gets out. She takes a second to looks around, but he's in the deep shadows of a nearby alley and he knows she can't see him. She bites her lip - he can see it even from this distance - and heads for the building entrance.

He makes sure she's safely inside and in the elevator before he heads for the fire escape.

He's made this climb before but he's always been in his Hood leathers, never a suit and helmet. He wonders if maybe she is right and he is over thinking this, but he'd rather be overly cautious and keep her safe than run the risk of losing her again.

This fire escape really is far too easy to access and climb. Maybe he should talk to her about better security for her apartment. Or a better apartment.

But would he ever trust anything or anyone other than himself - and Diggle - to keep her safe?

He's still musing on that thought when he reaches her floor and reaches out to tap on the window.

Then he pauses, freezes almost, because he's looking through her bedroom window and she's getting undressed.

Oliver watches as Felicity reaches up behind her back to unsnap the sports bra, and pull it down her arms. She has her back to the window and his eyes follow the line of her spine from her neck to the curve of her ass. Despite the fact he know that if he were closer he would be able to see scrapes and bruises, the skin looks unblemished from here. She doesn't bother with a bra, reaching instead for a tank top then wrapping an oversized flannel shirt around herself.

Her hands come up to undo the knot of her hair and fix it into the usual ponytail.

Oliver swallows, his mouth is dry.

He taps on the glass and she turns and smiles. With the lights on in her apartment she can't possibly see him but she smiles anyway.

She unlatches the window and pushes it up and she's so close he has to take a moment. He thanks his foresight for the fact he's still wearing a helmet and she can't see his face.

So he takes a deep breath and climbs through the window.

"I expected you at the door," she says happily, "but I suppose I should have guessed you wouldn't be so obvious." She clearly has no idea how long he crouched outside her window and watched her.

He knows he won't he able to get the image of her skin out of his head for a while, so he busies himself shutting the window and pulling the drapes closed.

The few seconds that takes are enough for Oliver to know he has himself under control so he takes off the helmet.

"I like surprising people," he says, using a bit of his club owner charm to try and take back control of the situation.

"I like surprises," she says, then sits down on the bed and pulls on a pair of thick woollen socks. "And I like wine, so come on Oliver, what have you got for me?"

He swings the small backpack off and offers it to her.

She opens the zipper and giggles.

"I knew it!" She crows, "I knew you would have better wine than me." She heads for the kitchen and he follows, pulled in her wake.

"You seem...happy." He says, trying to make sense of this new mood.

"I'm home," she says, "I'm alive, I have wine and you. At various points today I never thought I'd have any of those things ever again." She pauses, "not that I have you, but you're here and you're not dead and I really did think that you might be for a while there."

"I thought that too," he says, "about you."

"It was horrible," she says.

"It was," he agrees.

She's opening the wine at her kitchen counter, but the kitchen itself is tiny and he's obliged to stand much closer to her than he would normally do so.

"Grab the glasses," she says, waving at a nearby cupboard, and he has to lean past and over her to do so. His arm brushes her shoulder and she looks up over her shoulder at him, so close and smiles.

And such a smile; she genuinely delighted and happy to see him.

"There are very few things," she says simply, "that good red wine can not make better."

She's so close, and she's so happy and he almost lost her today.

He almost lost her today.

And he doesn't know when he made the choice to close the distance, but suddenly her lips are right there and he can't help himself.

So he kisses her.


	24. Listing options

Oliver Queen is kissing her.

Oliver Queen is kissing her.

She smiled at Oliver and he kissed her.

His body presses against her hip so she's standing all twisted; half facing away from, half curled into him. One of his hands is in her hair, cupping her head. And his lips-

His lips.

Felicity sighs into the kiss, opening her mouth to him and wanting to turn, wrap her arms around him but she can't. She's caught between his body and the counter and about the only part of him she can reach is his face.

She brings her hand up to stroke her fingers along his cheek, and he makes a sound halfway between a groan and a growl, and suddenly he's moving.

His hands go to her hips, turning her towards him and lifting and suddenly she's sitting on the counter-top kissing him, her legs around his waist.

She doesn't know why this is happening and she has the strongest feeling that this is a temporary situation at best - he'll come to his senses soon enough - but she can't stop kissing him.

Months of feelings - her crush, his teasing, her worry, his hand in hers, her pain when she thought he was dead - all the disparate things she's experienced since he came into her life, all combine into this burning passion she feels for him.

His hands are in her hair and she has one hand on his face and the other on his back pressing him towards her.

Her entire body tingles. She can feel this kiss in her toes. She wants more. She wants everything. She wants him.

And that's when it stops.

He pulls his mouth from hers and drops his head down, resting his forehead on her shoulder.

His hands have dropped to the countertop, and he's holding on so hard his knuckles have gone white.

His entire body is tense, the muscles hard. He's on edge, as if angry, and he's no longer kissing her.

He's still pressed up against her, still has her legs around him but he's not moving and he's not touching her.

Her hands move on his back, running over the material of his jacket. But after a few seconds she stops, and she just sits there. Waiting.

She lets herself close her eyes, lets herself regret what she knows is about to happen and says:

"Oliver?"

He's silent.

"Oliver," she repeats, "are you okay?"

He moves, lifting his head and she opens her eyes to see his, so close. The expression on his face is new to her. It's intense and almost angry.

"I'm sorry," he says, then takes a half step back, out of her embrace.

Her hands fall from him and suddenly she's just a girl sitting on a countertop. No longer half of a whole.

She blinks, trying to reorder her thoughts, trying to dampen down the tingling she has running through her entire body.

"It's okay," she says, before she can think. "It's fine."

"I shouldn't have..." He says. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologise for," she says as brightly as she can. She hops down off of the counter and turns, putting her back to him so she can have a second to compose herself.

"I'm sorry," he says again.

Felicity nods to herself. She should have known. She did know. But she let herself be caught up in the moment and now things are going to be weird.

She moves sideways in her tiny kitchen and opens a cupboard to retrieve two wine glasses. She pours the bottle, filling both and takes a long swig of her own glass before she turns around to offer him his.

"I'm sorry," he repeats, not looking at her.

She holds out the glass but he doesn't take it. Just stares at the floor.

"Oliver," she says, pushing the glass at him.

"I'm so sorry."

And suddenly she's had enough of apologies.

"What for," she says, and even she can hear the edge in her tone, "for kissing me, or for stopping kissing me, because I have to say Oliver I'm only upset about one of those things and I don't think it's the one you're upset about."

His eyes snap to hers and he stares.

Felicity drains her wine glass, and then, because he's apparently forgotten how to move his hands, she brings his glass to her lips and drinks that too.

"Felicity." There's pain in his tone now and part of her thinks 'Good', but the rest is still trying to get her to shut up so she won't reveal just how hurt she is.

She turns her back on him, moving with shaky hands to refill the glass she's drinking from.

"Felicity," he says again and she feels his hand on her back. A comforting hand. A friendly hand. A platonic hand.

"No," she says, shrugging his hand off of her, "you don't get to do this both ways. You don't get to kiss me and reject me and then touch me as if nothing has happened."

She turns to him and he's standing so close and she refuses - refuses! - to let that fact sway her.

"Why?" She says, "why kiss me now?"

"I wanted to."

"And now you don't want to?"

"No," he says, "yes. I want to but this isn't a good idea."

"Why not?"

"My life," he says, "my lives."

"Oh stop," she says, "don't use the hood as an excuse not to be happy. I know you haven't exactly been living the celibate life. Why is this any different?"

"I don't want to damage our friendship."

She stares at him, incredulous.

"You don't want to damage our friendship?"

"You're too important to me."

His body language is odd. He's holding his arms down by his sides stiffly. A muscle works in his jaw. He looks like he's psyching himself up to face torture, not a conversation.

"Why am I important to you?" She asks as neutrally as she can, "because I hack for you? Because I get you information?"

"Yes."

"And that's it? My value as a resource?"

"No!" His hands curl into fists and she wonders if once again she's going to be dressing the wounds his nails leave in his palms.

"You really need to stop doing that," she says.

"Doing what?"

"That." She gestures at his hands. "Stop hurting yourself."

He looks down at himself and lets out a short bitter laugh.

"Hurting myself."

He shakes his head, his expression incredulous.

"Felicity Smoak," he says, "you truly are remarkable."

"Right," she says and drinks her wine. "Remarkable me. So remarkable." She knows she sounds bitter but right now she doesn't care.

"You are," he insists, "remarkable."

"Not remarkable enough, apparently." She turns away. She's hurt and she doesn't want him to see it.

"I kissed you," he says, "because I couldn't not kiss you. I thought I lost you and the idea of not kissing you was so wrong."

"But it's not wrong now," she sips at her drink, looking at the kitchen cabinets at the other end of the room. He's between her and the door so she can't get out, but that doesn't mean he gets to see how upset she is.

"It's wrong," he admits.

"Then why stop."

"I'm not," he hesitates, "I'm not good at this."

"The tabloids would beg to differ."

"That was then," and she can't see it but she can tell, somehow, from his tone that he's digging his nails into his hands again, and she sighs. "Things are different now. I need you. I need you in my life."

"To hack things," she says and tries not to feel bitter.

"No," he says, "I just need you in my life."

He sounds lost enough that she can't help but turn back to look at him.

"Then why push me away."

"I want to kiss you," he says, "I want to kiss you so much, but I'm not good at this and when I screw it up you'll leave and I..." His hands come up in a beseeching gesture. "I couldn't take that."

She stares at him.

"That is by far the stupidest thing I have ever heard," she says, "and I dealt with the idiots who wanted to upgrade everyone to Vista. You think that if you kiss me, you'll screw up our relationship and I'll leave, so you won't kiss me. But you've already kissed me, that's happened, that's done. That genie is not going back in the bottle. You are screwing up this relationship right now. Not at some point in the future. Now!"

Oliver winces.

"But you know what," she says, "I'm not leaving. I care too much about you and what we're doing to leave you. So not only are you screwing things up, you're also completely wrong about what I might or might not do."

"If people know we're together," he says, "they'll go after you, you'll get hurt."

"Oh my god," she says, "you mean I might get kidnapped and strapped to a bomb and then be locked in a small room and left to die. That might happen?!"

"Felicity-"

"No!" She snaps, "you're just coming up with excuses. I'm already at risk, kissing me isn't going to change that. You're already screwing things up, and I'm not leaving. The only thing on the line right now is our friendship, and I'm not saying that we have to be together or nothing, but if we're not together, things have to change, because I can't keep giving you everything and getting nothing in return."

She drains the last of the wine in her glass and set it down on the countertop.

"So here are your options," she says, feeling rash but going ahead and saying it anyway, "you can stay and you can kiss me and we can figure out what this is. Or you can leave, and tomorrow I come to the club and I'll work with you but we're entirely and completely platonic and you stop touching me and I will move on with my life." She nods to herself, satisfied. "That's it. That's your choice."

Oliver stares at her.

"Now," she says, "I've had a hard day. I'm taking this wine," she pours what's left in the bottle into her glass, "and I'm going to go see what there is on my DVR that I haven't watched, and you can think about your options."

And she pushes past him to walk out of the kitchen, leaving him speechless behind her.


	25. Making choices

Oliver blinks.

He's standing alone in her kitchen. He can hear the muted sounds of whatever movie or television show it is she's chosen playing in the living room.

He stands alone in her kitchen and he absolutely does not know what to do.

Did a slightly drunk Felicity really just kiss him and yell at him and tell him to man up and make a choice?

Though he admits, he kissed her first. He closed the distance between them. He touched her lips with his.

But she's responded. She touched his face. She let him lift her up and pulled him into her embrace.

She did that.

And then he stopped it.

Because he had to. Because if today has shown anything it's that he can't be trusted around her.

She's worth too much and she almost died because of him and she's put a choice on the table and he doesn't know how to face it.

She's also now drunk two bottles of wine by herself and he doubts she would have said so much if she'd been entirely sober.

But if she'd been entirely sober would she have kissed him at all?

He replays it all in his head. The spicy wine taste of her mouth. The soft noises she made when he kissed her. The way her fingertips stroked his skin. How she opened herself to him, pulling him in to stand between her legs, wrapping herself around him.

He wants nothing more than to kiss her again. Discover what noises she might make as he runs his hands over her body or kisses the side of her neck. Learn what makes her gasp and mewl and moan.

His traitorous mind flashes an image at him - Felicity's naked back as he watched her change through the window. And Felicity, damp from the shower, wrapped in a towel, crouching beside him, his hand moving of its own accord to trace the path of a droplet of water on her flushed skin.

She's sitting on the sofa, right there, right in the next room.

It's a distance of feet.

He could walk to her in seconds, press her down into the cushions and brand himself into her skin.

Touch her.

Claim her.

Love her.

And then eventually get her killed.

Just like Tommy. And Shado. And even Slade.

Slade who he thought was long dead, for whom he carried guilt for failing his part of the mission. Slade who kidnapped Felicity and would have left her to die as close to him as she is now, gasping for water and clawing at her own throat as her body drowned on air.

She's still at risk. If he leaves now it could all begin again - there's still at least one enemy out there who knows her value to him.

And would that value really change all that much if he walked into the other room and kissed her?

He's never touched her romantically before today and she still almost died.

And she says she won't leave. So she'll never be safe.

And if she did leave would she even be safe? He wouldn't be there to watch over her and keep her safe after all.

Would it not be better to go to her as she asks and keep her safe himself, using all of the hard fought skills that Slade and Shado taught him?

His mind swims. Possibilities and nightmares and fantasies overlapping and replaying.

It's a simple choice. Stay or go?

It's an impossible choice. Stay or go?

The sound of the television seems to diminish and before he can think about it, he's crossed to the doorway to check on her, make sure she's alright.

Felicity is curled up on the sofa, a blanket pulled down around her shoulders. Her back is to him, he can't see her face, but she looks at peace.

She's not stretched out across the whole couch. There's enough space left enough for someone to join her.

He wonders if she did that intentionally.

If he leaves, if he draws that line of what she is to him, this won't ever happen again. He won't be able to touch her.

Other men will but not him.

He thinks about the hand she offered him at Tommy's funeral, the hand he held on the first day of his mother's trial. He thinks about rubbing her shoulders, carrying her to the cot in the basement, his hand on her naked thigh. He thinks about leaving her with the bomb only hours ago, then being so convinced that she was dead and feeling only loss. Loss of something he never quite realised he had.

Something he'd always avoided trying to see.

He doesn't know if this is love.

It feels different to Laurel, the other half of the only other love story he's ever been part of. Laurel was beautiful and trusting and electric too, but she was also ambitious and determined and, if he's being honest with himself, disappointed in him. He never quite seemed able to live up to the high standards she had set, and after a while he would purposely try not to. He cheated on her because it was easy and because the other women were there and because at least that meant she wasn't being all disappointed at him failing a college class or choosing a kegger over going to some high culture event with her.

Felicity challenges him in a different way. She's pushed him to change his methods, to not kill, but he hasn't felt that she did it because she's trying to improve him, instead because it was the right thing to do. The better thing to do.

Laurel's right thing always involved conforming to what society expected. Felicity's is more moral, less about appearances.

Or is he oversimplifying? Laurel fights very day for people who have no else left to fight for them and she does it inside the system. Is that more or less moral than Felicity's attempts to push him towards the light?

The truth of it is that both women are very similar in who they are at the core - all their differences are surface level.

Laurel is never anything less than confident, Felicity is frequently flustered. Laurel would never have gambled, Felicity can count cards. Laurel was taken in entirely with his cover, Felicity had begun to see through it even before he turned up bleeding in her back seat.

Laurel sees the past, both theirs and the apparently insurmountable obstacles of the island and Tommy.

Felicity only knows him as he is now.

And she knows all of him as he is now. She's witnessed all sides of his life and she's almost died and she still chooses to stay anyway.

Would Laurel?

On the sofa Felicity lets out a soft sound, and he realises, with a smile that it's a snore.

She kissed him and she yelled at him and she challenged him to make a choice and now she's asleep.

Trusting his footsteps to be silent, he moves across the room towards the back of the sofa.

He sees her hair first.

Those shining, golden tresses.

He remembers her saying she dyed it and how he couldn't resist leaning in to see if he could spot the roots, see her natural colour.

He remembers the softness of it as he kissed her.

He remembers the sight of it down around her shoulders in that gold dress.

He remembers her pushing Diggle and himself away in that dress with a bomb around her neck, concerned more for them than for herself.

She does that. Puts others before herself. If he leaves now, she said she will still come to the club tomorrow. Still work with him for the good of the city. Still work with him, even if it breaks her heart to do so.

He doesn't want to break her heart.

He doesn't want to break any part of her.

And she's right. No matter what, she's in his life now.

She's curled up on her side, one arm under her head, the other clutching the blanket tight around her.

There are bags under her eyes and scratches on her skin. He can see the rising purple marks on her neck.

But she's at peace. Safe here with him.

He thinks about the past year. All the moments he could have kissed her. There's been more than one; moments of tension and possibility, and yet he kissed her tonight in her kitchen when she asked him to get glasses for wine.

Felicity stirs in her sleep and without thinking he places a hand on her shoulder, smoothes the blanket there.

If he leaves he won't be able to touch her anymore.

She relaxes, smiling in her sleep.

She settles back against the cushions. But there's still space for him there.

He kissed her tonight because his instincts told him to.

And he trusts his instincts.

And despite all of his doubts, all of his worries, he can't regret kissing her.

He steps around the sofa and crouches, bringing his face close to hers.

He gently cups her cheek with his hand, sees how she smiles and turns her head into his touch, despite her lack of consciousness.

And Oliver Queen makes his choice.


	26. Epilogue - Holding hands

She wakes up with a sore neck.

And a headache.

And aches and pains all over her body.

She goes to stretch and finds that there's something in the way. Her brain is too fogged with sleep to know what it is, so blearily she lifts her head and opens her eyes.

It's a leg.

A denim-covered leg.

Felicity blinks, and lifts her head further. She's not wearing her glasses but there's no mistaking the leg's owner.

Oliver.

He's sitting on her sofa, head back, fast asleep. Her head is resting right up against his leg and one of his hands lies lightly on her shoulder.

As she watches, she can see the shift in him from sleep to awake. He doesn't move, doesn't make a sound, but suddenly he's there in the way he wasn't a second ago.

His hand on her shoulder tightens then releases.

"Felicity?" He says, his eyes still closed.

"Yes?"

"Go back to sleep."

She stares. She remembers with the wine-soaked recollection of the slightly mortified that she offered him a choice last night.

Stay or go.

He apparently chose to stay and she slept right through it.

Or, at least, she hopes she slept through it. She certainly didn't drink enough for her to forget anything, did she?

Did she?

His hand moves on her shoulder, stroking her clothing.

"Oliver?" She asks, softly.

"Yes?"

"If I go back to sleep," she says, more than a little uncertain, "are you going to be here when I wake up?"

"Yes." He smiles. "I'm not going anywhere."

Her heart leaps, and she can't quite believe it.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Oliver?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not sure I'll be able to get back to sleep."

He snorts, blowing the air out of his nose, then moves, twisting.

His eyes are still closed but apparently he doesn't need them, because he shifts his position, picks her up and lays her back down, so that instead of her lying with her head against his thigh, they're now lying together, her body pressed against his chest, his arm around her.

His other hand comes up and takes hold of her hand, intertwining their fingers together.

"Felicity," he says, when they are apparently both arranged to his satisfaction. "Try."

She lies in his embrace and closes her eyes.

His hand on her back moves on lazy circles.

His hand holds hers tightly.

She knows they'll have to talk about this. And it won't be easy; there are mountains still to climb, battles left to fight, enemies to defeat.

But he's here. And she's here.

And he's holding her hand in a way that suggests he won't ever let go. Not for comfort, not for grounding, not to save her life - just to touch her.

And that's enough.

For now, at least.

Felicity lets her fears go, knowing that whatever dreams may come now will be sweet ones.

Because Oliver is holding her hand.

And for the first time, it means something.


End file.
